Reflecting on Social Justice and Human Rights

The post this week is by Allyson Carr, who was a worker at the Conference on Social Justice and Human Rights discussed in this post and is currently the Associate Director of the Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics.

As some of you may recall, this past April the Centre co-hosted a major conference on Social Justice and Human Rights. The conference themes have set much of the tone for the material on this blog over the past year, both prior to the conference and afterwards, and there has been a great deal of good discussion that came out of the conference itself, including at least two projects: one on conceptions of social justice among faith groups (with the CRC being a focal microcosm) and one on economic justice. Given the high quality of the work presented there and the conversations that followed it, we have been working on compiling summaries of all of the sessions that took place during the two day conference. The summaries are ready for viewing now and a pdf of them can be found here. I encourage you to take the time to read through them, but we will also shortly be posting each summary separately on our conference blog, to enable commenting on topics in particular sessions. We’ll let you know when those are up, as well as when the video currently being produced, which highlights aspects of the conference's thinking on social justice and human rights issues, becomes available. For our discussion here this week, though, I'm just going to pull out a few points that really struck me. We can discuss those here, and continue discussions of the more specific issues that are raised in the summaries as they get posted on the conference blog. 

Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff was the keynote speaker who opened the conference, and as it discusses in the summary of his opening lecture, any reckoning with the issues of social justice and human rights can not meaningfully proceed until that reckoning is able to give an account of why justice matters. In all the very important activist work and theory production that goes on both in the advocacy world and academia, giving a an account of "why does justice matter?" can get lost in the details of fighting for justice. And yet, without such an account, how can we persuade the sceptical or agree on what constitutes justice in very complex cases, even where all sides desire justice? Does justice matter because without it we are not responding to some normative call for fairness? Does it matter because only with justice is any real human flourishing possible? Do we think of justice as a response mandated by divine authority, and if so, what does that mean for those who believe no such thing exists? Is justice necessary in a positive sense for social progress, or in a negative sense--to avoid things like war and suffering? Why should we, all of humanity, care about justice, and can we even have, is it even desirable to have, the same reason(s) for doing so?

The next thing that struck me as I read through the summaries again was comments by Dr. Abdulaziz Sachedina, who spoke as a panellist in the inter-religious plenary panel on Religion and Human Rights in Canada of the need to find ways where liberal and orthodox traditions within a particular religion can learn to speak meaningfully with each other, making genuine progress through real dialogue. It was this emphasis on placing what often become opposing forces within a religious tradition--orthodoxy and liberalism, to paint in broad brush strokes--in real dialogue with each other that spoke to me. So often a human tendency seems to be to pull away from speaking or engaging with those with whom one does not agree, leaving sides to any given debate more and more polarized. We can see this within the Christian tradition as well, where divisions over "fundamentalism" and "liberalism" have shoved a growing wedge between members. How do we switch from polemics to real, engaged, debate and dialogue? 

Although there were many other discussions that made me pause and reflect and which I feel have been particularly helpful in transforming my own work and practice, I'll mention one other spot that stuck out to me in the summaries. This was the words of Deborah Stienstra in the panel "Disability and Human Rights: Issues of Access and Attitudes." So much of the conversation at the conferenced focused on finding a language and conceptual apparatus by which necessary practical work in human rights issues and advocacy could be done, but much of that discussion had centred on what, exactly, constituted a right or possibly even a human right. Dr. Stienstra posed the question from a different angle, implicitly asking how we think of what constitutes a human. Her point that disability is part of being human was a poignant reminder of our humanity, in all its personal and collective frailty, finitude and beautiful diversity. Any discussion of rights and justice needs to remember this, and remember the different needs and abilities of the complex creatures we all are.

There were many other very important and insightful discussions that warrant extended discussion toward transforming the way we live and work: the panel on Aboriginal Rights in Canada had vital reflections on land and identity that need to be heard and taken up; the panel on Environmental Rights highlighted the urgent need for stopping global ecological disaster before it becomes unavoidable; the panel on Children's Rights spoke of the intense impact of abuse and exploitation on the coming generations, and the need to provide a safe and flourishing upbringing not just for some children, or even "most" children, but for all children. 

There were a myriad of excellent discussions and discussion-starters, but I've raised these ones in particular to whet your appetite and get us talking. All of these issues are ones which we cannot afford to ignore, and which even if we could, I would argue that to do so would be fundamentally wrong. This is because justice does  matter, and our ability to pursue justice successfully is an intimate picture of who humans are and who we are becoming.  

‘Cyber Sinai’? Does our world need of a code of ‘cyberethics’?

In the wake of the gut-wrenching episode orbiting around the death of Amanda Todd, there is much leftover in the proverbial pot to stew in our minds. For one thing, what about regulation in the cyber sphere? The conflicts that used to be confined to after-school hours have moved to a whole new dimension – playground bullying has escalated to the point where the battleground is literally everywhere in range; the jungle gym has become a fully-fledged and merciless (proverbial) jungle.

“It’s not that bad,” you might respond. I would say for many it is. Yes, those pockets of safety exist in and out of schools and that is to be praised. But I would not want to imply that technology is solely to blame for rises in rates of suicide among teens (that would be much to simplistic). But I do think it is a good time to discuss the plausibility and nature of what can be done to harness the cyber world’s power for good instead of harm. Social theorists and philosophers at the turn of the century were already wary of the effects that the surge of power brought on by the Enlightenment would have in the age to come. And they made predications that are now coming true. So while yes, there has been an explosive amount of work done related to this issue, I suggest modern phenomena have resulted that these theorists were not able to predict. The responsibility remains ours to think through the pervasive effects of technology on individuals and society at large.

Perhaps because it is still such a relatively new object of research, findings have yet to be confirmed by long-term studies. This status of being “still-in-the-works” means that important information has yet to be dispersed to the wider public and in the meantime, we have the obligation to think through these issues ourselves. I certainly have tried in my own personal life to establish a healthy relationship to the Internet (I’ve had quite the love-hate relationship with Facebook, “breaking-up” with it one too many times only to come crawling back months later).

A friend of mine who games online once commented on the sickening amount of harassment that coexists alongside other contrastingly positive effects of online community. Much of the harassment is misogynistic. It is much more difficult for anyone to hold the offender accountable for the words that they can so effortlessly spew onscreen. In a comfortable alienation from their words and “online actions,” the offender is protected by the medium of technology separating them from their peers and own productivity. Fundamentally, human rights don’t change online; and yet, they become easier to violate as the humanity of the other person diminishes onscreen.

What can we do, if anything, to protect our whole selves, our children, and each other from ‘cybersins’, (for lack of a better word)?

Pondering Remembrance

It is often said that it’s one of the jobs of historians to remember and help us remember the past to keep us from a repetition of the same mistakes. While I’m sure mistakes do often get repeated left, right, and centre on every continent and strata of society in one form or another, I would also say that there are ‘mistakes’ and ‘Mistakes’. There are events throughout our histories that have fundamentally shaped our worlds, altering their courses, for better or for worse. In these cases, ‘catastrophes’, ‘atrocities’, or ‘tragedies’ would be more appropriate in naming such events.

And now the predicament. For many reasons, in this day and age, our senses of time can seem unbalanced: one can be wistfully stuck in the past, blindsided to all but the here and now (the romanticized notion of ‘living in the present’), and/or fixated on the ‘not-yet’ (we have an inability to appreciate the past and present as we scurry from one activity to the next). Many of us do not know our country’s history, our family heritage, or even really what’s going on in the world at large. While I’m sure there are many factors that could account for this, what I’m wondering, as Remembrance Day approaches, is what power reflective engagement can have to transform humanity. I state that generally because I think I’m right in believing that remembering can transform not just individual lives, but ― as this act multiplies in the lives of individuals ― societies and even nations can be transformed.

At the Canadian Evangelical Theological Association’s conference I went to last Saturday, I heard a young woman named Rachel give a paper where she proposed a new model of working with Toronto’s inner city poor based on her experience with the outreach called ‘Sanctuary’. In particular, what I remember is her discussion of ‘memorial’ or ‘anamnesis’: a recalling, or more aptly put, a re-telling. What she found was that the more the community grew in friendship and trust and could share their stories of past hurt and present frustrations, the more healing was brought to them. They had to remember these issues and their own personal histories – to look them in the eye – in order to be free from the destructive powers of these hurts. In this way, remembrance led to reconciliation.

In Christianity, the Eucharist or ‘communion’ is a time to remember the sacrifice of Christ on our behalves. The theologian Jürgen Moltmann writes, “Eschatological hope for the future always also confers retroactive historical community” and informs that an inscription at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (the holocaust memorial) reads, “Forgetfulness leads to exile, while remembrance is the secret of redemption.”

I dwell on the act of remembrance because it is a possibility open to all life and all cultures – yes, I believe it is universal. But in what way might (what we might call ‘inauthentic’) remembrance obstruct reconciliation, healing, or positive transformation? That is to say, what distinguishes remembering that leads to freedom from remembering that leads to guilt of self and others? And how do other religions incorporate this primordial practice of remembering as well? What specific events ought never to be forgotten but indeed passed down from generation to generation? Quebec’s slogan is “Je me souviens” (I remember…), and the veteran’s memorial one is “Lest we forget.” Have we forgotten? Just as Paul in his letter to the Colossians solicited the remembrance of the church (“Remember my chains”), what voices in distress cry out to be remembered by those in freedom?

Working Theory and Practice Together

First I should start with an apology for the lack of new content in the last month—with the new academic year starting, other projects became urgent, and we at the Centre have been looking for a Junior Member to take over writing some of these posts. I am happy to say that we have found one, and Sarah will begin writing shortly. This will be my last full post for a while at least, but I look forward to introducing Sarah soon. Stay tuned for more conversation!

It seems to me that for those of us for whom scholarship is part of our calling, a re-orientation or renewed return to our context is sometimes needed. We are used to reflecting on texts, on ideas, on concepts, and such reflection is necessary for our work. But we also need to come back to all the messy chaos of practice from time to time, of what is happening in the world around us and what effect, if any, we are having on that world. The question has been raised here in earlier posts of what academics can really do in terms of working for social justice, and to my mind that is a question to which we must keep coming back. If we are going to take seriously the call, as part of scholarly vocation, that our theories and philosophical efforts must work toward engaging and mutually transforming this context in which we find ourselves (in terms of Reformational language, working for Shalom) then that question, what can we do as scholars to work for social flourishing, should be at the forefront of our thought. It should be one we struggle with regularly, one we allow to challenge our research and our writing, our teaching and our learning.  

This does not mean that we all need to become political theorists or philosophers whose sole research concerns are social justice. But it does mean, I believe, that we need to be able to give an articulate answer to the question of how our work contributes to wider social flourishing, and why we chose to do it—and we need to let those more practical questions influence us. I once had a friend, whose candour I appreciated, ask me “yes, your research is very interesting and I enjoy reading it, but how is talking about how narrative is used in philosophy (my research project) going to fill anybody’s belly? How is it going to address any real suffering? Is it really going to have any impact on people’s lives?” Those are important questions to be asked, and though I had already considered them a bit, being confronted by them in a constructively critical way, again and again, forced me to really reflect and articulate how this was so, how my work was working deeply both on a scholarly level and as connected to the real needs of my social context. It also, and just as importantly, forced me to continue going back to that context, to the nitty gritty details of life, to reading the news and knowing what is happening in the world around me and talking to those whose calling is more concerned with practice than with theory.

It’s that seeming divide we keep coming back to—the apparent gap between theory and practice. In the work I have done with this Centre over the last few years, a particular point has been brought home to me again and again: I, as a scholar, cannot leave practice aside. I cannot leave practical matters aside. I need to talk, and listen, to those outside of academia. We need to work together in order to make both our work better and in order to better reach a wider audience to effect greater and more lasting changes.

If I could draw a cheeky analogy with the theatre, what if we imagined a play that was collaboratively written by everyone who was going to be working on it, both onstage and backstage? In terms of such a collaboratively written play, could we think of activists and practitioners as the actors who perform the play and bring it to life, the people whose faces you see, while the theorists are like the backstage techs—people who handle lighting and costumes and set construction, etc? In the (metaphorical) play I’m talking about, both theorists and practitioners had a hand in writing it, and everyone has a hand in making it come together as a finished whole; as a work with hopefully transformative power.

More and more people are trying collaborative work like this. I’m not talking about writing a play together (though that would be interesting!) but rather designing a project, one that looks at a real and pressing social issue through the eyes of both practitioners and theorists together, and depends on everyone working together to carry it out. So, speaking now as scholars, how do we bring our work to bear on all the complexity that pressing social issues entail and with all the depth of engagement that good scholarly work should have? How do we do so in a way isn’t just paying lip service, and that also allows us, as scholars, to stay true to the more abstract work we are engaged in, that truly can be necessary background work without which practice might miss some important possibilities? And how can we work together with those who, from their concrete and day-to-day engagement with people, governments, agencies and issues, know the immediate context “on the ground” better than we do? It strikes me that we can accomplish more together than apart.

Relating justice and faith

We talk a lot about justice on this blog, and in this entry as the Summer wraps up, I want to talk about what justice is in relation to one's faith or spiritual vocation. The thing that has occasioned this particular entry is a meeting I had recently where we talked a bit about concepts of justice and how, as Dr. Wolterstorff mentioned in his address at the Social Justice and Human Rights conference, justice differs from benevolence. During this meeting, someone raised the question of whether justice had any links to piety, and to a sense of Christian calling. I thought that was a pretty good question.

It's an important question for the Christian tradition, of course, because the answer will shape the way Christian faith is understood. This is not to say that other faith traditions don't also have conceptions of justice as part of a spiritual calling—many do, and one of the greatest things about inter-religious dialogue is the fact that we can learn from each other's understandings. What, then, do we as followers of Christ bring to the proverbial table in terms of understandings of justice? And are such concepts linked for us not just to a moral imperative to do the “right thing” but to the very ground of our faith?

In thinking through this question, it struck me that both the Old and New Testaments have quite a bit to say on the matter, and many of the passages that could be cited use language that is quite striking. In Isaiah 59:15-16, for example, God is described as being “appalled” at the lack of justice, and at the fact that there was “no one to intervene” when the needs of justice were not met. Interestingly enough, earlier in the same chapter, injustice is described in terms of spurious law suits and false witness, and while law during the time the book of Isaiah was written is certainly a great deal different than law today, they are part of the same tradition (very broadly defined) stretching across time. “Intervening”, then takes on a particular tone, and justice is linked with law--with what is required of one.

In the Gospel accounts, justice does not appear in quite the same way, but Christ does issue a very specific call regarding “whatever you do to the least of these”. In that passage, he describes those who intervened in a different way: clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, and visiting the imprisoned. Furthermore, Christ draws a parallel with the treatment of “these” people, and the treatment of his own person. He seems to make it clear that however we act to those in need is how we act to Christ himself.

If, then, God is appalled at injustice, as Isaiah describes it, and Christ issues a very pointed call to feed, clothe and otherwise care for those in need, it seems to me that acting justly—where such action is understand as intervening to help those in need, treating them as we would treat Christ, were we to suddenly stumble across him in a similar situation—is in fact part of a Christian vocation, and not just “what we should do.” (Which is in no way to detract from saying that acting justly is what we should do). Going out on a limb here, I would even say that we could call it a requirement of faithful living. 

In the understandable rush to work for justice in this day and age, those of us who are already justice advocates of one kind or another can become enmeshed in structures that are not comfortable with spiritual language such as “calling” or “spiritual discipline”—another phrase I have recently heard used to describe justice work. And I think we do have to be aware of whether that kind of language can be alienating to some. But I also think, for those who consider themselves to be followers of Christ, that it is worth having a look at our own concepts of justice, and how they may be linked to our very vocation--how they may be linked to our commitment to be a follower of Christ. Can we see such a relation between justice and a life of faith?