Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum Copyright (c) 2013 University of Tennessee, Knoxville All rights reserved. http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst Recent documents in Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum en-us Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:45:41 PDT 3600 A Comparison of Professional Traders and Psychopaths in a Simulated Non-Zero Sum Game http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss2/1 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss2/1 Thu, 20 Dec 2012 18:30:33 PST In a prior study psychopathic individuals showed a diminished level of cooperativeness but realized higher individual rewards in a prisoner’s dilemma game, compared with community controls. The present study replicated this finding with professional bank traders, who exhibited less cooperative behavior than both of the aforermentioned groups (community controls and psychopathic patients). While the bank traders did not obtain a higher gain than the psychopathic individuals at an absolute level, they maximized the discrepancy between their own profit and the yield of their anonymous computerized gaming partner. The bank traders were more prone than psychopathic patients to rely on strategies that considerably harmed the profit of their gaming partners without necessarily optimizing their own total profit. The community controls achieved the same overall gain as traders and psychopaths. Unlike traders and psychopathic patients, the normal controls balanced overall gains of themselves and their game opponent, which led to the highest overall profit, whereas the traders achieved the lowest overall profit.

]]> Thomas Noll JD, MD et al. Book Review: On Critique by Luc Boltanski http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/7 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/7 Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:16:23 PDT Alexander M. Stoner Intergroup Dialogues, Building Community and Relational Justice http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/6 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/6 Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:16:18 PDT Intergroup Dialogues, Building Community and Relational Justice

Abstract

Research suggests that civic engagement in American communities and connections among their residents seem to be in decline. With demographic changes indicating a greater population diversity, many are concerned about the social fabric that binds people together. One solution offered in the last two decades is engagement in intergroup dialogues - efforts to bring diverse populations into face-to-face facilitated conversations that attempt to craft better understanding, stronger relationships, and possible social action. This paper will look at the current research on "intergroup dialogues" to address three questions. First, why might such dialogues be important to building community, promoting reconciliation, and seeking social justice. Second, what does the research on these dialogues, in both community programs and on college campuses, tell us about their outcomes? And third, do intergroup dialogues provide a road to reconciliation that might be applied in the future to address broader issues of diversity?

]]> Bennett M. Judkins Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/5 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/5 Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:16:12 PDT ABSTRACT

Two people from diverse backgrounds — a black woman and a white man — embarked upon a three-year “healing journey” to attempt to overcome the trauma of historic harms brought on by America’s legacy of slavery and the lingering effects of present-day racism. Illustrated through the stories of their lives—and those of their ancestors — Gather at the Table is informed by trauma healing, restorative justice, and peacebuilding skills the authors learned through their work at Eastern Mennonite University and its STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience) and Coming to the Table programs. EMU is an acclaimed resource for peacebuilding, having introduced their healing models in war ravaged countries around the world. Coming to the Table began as an initiative focused on linking descendants of enslaved people with the descendants of those by whom they were enslaved.

Morgan and DeWolf decided to “live” the Coming to the Table model together. The legacy of slavery remains a horrendous and unhealed wound, a disease that must be diagnosed, treated, and cured. The approach shared in Gather at the Table may just make it possible to heal.

This is the story of two people who decided to try.

What follows is excerpted from Gather at the Table, which will be published by Beacon Press in October 2012.

]]> Thomas Norman DeWolf et al. Maori Education: The Politics of Reconciliation and Citizenship http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/4 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/4 Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:16:05 PDT The meaning of citizenship for many Indigenous peoples has historically entailed assimilation into the nation-state through colonizing education policies and practices. Several democratic nation-states are now seeking reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and redefining the meaning of citizenship within their borders. Using recent multicultural education and the politics of reconciliation research, this paper examines the possibility of reconciliation between nation-states and Indigenous peoples, focusing on the Maori of New Zealand and their quest for full inclusion and citizen rights. The paper illustrates why the politics of reconciliation is viewed as necessary to construct a political partnership that fosters a new meaning of citizenship. This analysis suggests that a new meaning of citizenship is emerging in New Zealand because the voices of the Maori are being recognized by the dominant group and historical injustices are being acknowledged through the Waitangi Tribunal process.

]]> John P. Hopkins Race, Memory, and Historical Responsibility: What Do Southerners Do with a Difficult Past? http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/3 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/3 Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:15:56 PDT Newly emerging, transitional societies –– that is, societies that traded dictatorial or authoritarian rule for some form of open or liberal polity –– face at least three interdependent problems of what is called in legal scholarship and social science “transitional justice”: the first is how (if at all) to hold the old regime’s autocratic, often violence-laden leadership responsible for its wrongdoings while in power; the second is what (if anything) to do with thousands upon thousands of ordinary folk whose participation in, or compliance with, the old regime helped legitimate and thus perpetuate the wrongdoing; and the third task how (if at all) to deal with the victims of the old regime. By situating the American South in the global context of the need of newly democratizing societies for transitional justice, we explore how the South’s similarities with and differences from other such societies have shaped the timing and character of its peoples’ post-Jim Crow era restorative justice and racial reconciliation projects, paying particular attention to criminal trials for perpetrators of past crimes, apology, truth and reconciliation-type commissions, and memorialization. We then document the extent of racial inequalities in employment, income, poverty status, and morbidity and mortality, arguing both that past racial injustices result in contemporary racial inequalities and that restorative justice points forward in time--and thus must deal with current inequities –– as well as backward.

]]> Larry J. Griffin et al. Editor's Introduction http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/2 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/2 Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:15:49 PDT Rachael E. Gabriel Front Matter http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/1 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol2/iss1/1 Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:15:44 PDT Critical Commentary on Raising the Point with Director's Reply http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/12 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/12 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:51:03 PST Raising the Point!, is an educational documentary which supports the South Bronx’s Hunts Point community’s efforts in improving the social, educational, environmental, and health injustices it encounters. Though the Hunts Point community faces many inequities, the film focuses on the issue of poor air quality.

]]> R. Scott Frey et al. Raising the Point http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/11 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/11 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:51:00 PST Raising the Point, is an educational documentary which supports the South Bronx’s Hunts Point community’s efforts in improving the social, educational, environmental, and health injustices it encounters. Though the Hunts Point community faces many inequities, the film focuses on the issue of poor air quality. What does an educational film have to do with South Bronx Environmental Health and Policy? Educational discourse typically focuses its critique on educational improvements inside of the classroom. However, there are critical factors that affect a student’s educational experience before they even walk through the school’s door. For example, P.S. 48 Joseph R. Drake School, which is located in Hunts Point, serves a little over 1000 K-5 students. A quick search on P.S. 48.’s grade level assessment data reveals that P.S. 48 is above average in certain grade levels and below average in others. Assumptions can made on the cause of the below average grade level assessments. Could it be a lack of resources or qualified teachers? Perhaps, but if you were to ask the P.S. 48 Principal, she would tell you that one of the biggest problems her school encounters is being located in a “desolate industrial neighborhood with high asthma rates.” Educational reform typically focuses on improvements in the classroom, but students live in real communities with real problems. Since the majority of school absenteeism is related to asthma, giving a student an enriching educational experience in a community overcome by heavy truck idling is an injustice that requires action. The intention of the film is not to provide solutions, but to stimulate dialogue that leads to sustainable change for Hunts Point. As a result, this project is merely a part of a larger grassroots effort to support Hunts Point’s mission in revitalizing the community.

You can download the file (428MB) by clicking on the "download" button at the top right of this page.

]]> Jason Mendez Ask, Tell http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/10 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/10 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:50:57 PST When I was designing these marks a year ago, I wanted to acknowledge GLBTQI military persons serving under the unjust policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. To accomplish this, one of the counterforms in each of the military branch logos is flipped upside down creating the GLBTQI symbol of an inverted triangle.

On September 20th, 2011, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was repealed.

Before the repeal, the simple act of wearing a t-shirt with one of these logos on it would have been an act of defiance and resistance. Today that same mark serves as a celebration of this significant step toward social justice being realized for GLBTQI citizens.

]]> Vickie R. Phipps Polishing Treadmills at Midnight: Is Refugee Integration an Elusive Goal? http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/9 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/9 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:50:55 PST It is often said that justice requires us to treat like cases alike. Accordingly, the U.S. refugee resettlement program provides all refugees—no matter where they are from, no matter their pasts—with very similar funding and services. Refugees, however, are far from alike. In this essay, I invoke Borgmann’s distinction between a “thing” and a “device” and draw on stories from my work with a resettlement agency to argue that our current, employment-driven system is in need of reform. Instead of being restricted to generic programs, refugee resettlement agencies should be funded to help each family achieve social integration in ways that best suit them.

]]> Woods Nash The Garden is Always Greener... http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/8 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/8 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:50:52 PST This essay builds upon a case study of community gardening in Miami to explore the extent to which these gardens are contributing to, and possibly triggering, processes of gentrification within low to lower-middle income neighborhoods. Through a literature review of recent urban planning policy and development in Miami and relevant discourse on the neoliberalization of food, food politics, food justice activism, and gentrification, I situate Miami’s gardens within a complex, multi-scalar web of ideas and processes. I show how the interaction of these forces, varying dramatically with respect to place, is implicit in the motivations for each garden’s development and creates a unique context for the production of a “garden community.” I then critically examine the impacts these gardens – and the respective communities they produce – have within the larger community of the neighborhoods and places in which they are located. Secondly, with the intent to help bridge the disconnect between food justice and broader social movements, I engage the Environmental Justice Movement literature as a pathway toward exploring possibilities for mitigating gentrification and the physical displacement of vulnerable people. Thus, by learning from the key factors vital to the successes of the Environmental Justice Movement, food justice advocates can better conceptualize and build alternative food initiatives with, and not for, marginalized communities.

]]> Billy Hall The Sound of Fury: Teaching, Tempers, and White Privileged Resistance http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/7 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/7 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:50:49 PST This essay focuses on the resistance of students situated in positions of privilege in classrooms addressing issues of dominance, identity, and oppression related to race and racism. Examining the psycho/social history of two critical aspects of resistance – defensiveness (related to guilt and shame) and denial – the author draws from both practice and theory to explicate the roots of this resistance and offer specific, effective ways to support students in moving through resistance into responsibility.

]]> Tema J. Okun Educating for Peace and Justice in America's Nuclear Age http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/6 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/6 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:50:46 PST The emergence of peace education as embodied in the context of peace studies, which emerged during the post-World War II ideological struggle between capitalism and Communism, the nuclear arms race pitting the United States against the former Soviet Union, the Vietnam War, and the civil rights movement in America, met with considerable criticism. There were many within and outside the academic community who argued that peace studies had very little to offer in terms of “real scholarship” and were primarily politically motivated. Some went so far as to insist that this new area of study lacked focus and discipline given the complexities associated with war and peace. It also became fashionable to attack those teaching and studying peace issues as anarchists, communists, and pacifists. They were ridiculed as subversives for challenging the hegemony of the U.S. military establishment. Over time all that would change as the early years of experimentation resulted in programs more rigorous in academic content and serious in focus. Although there are many who still question the viability of peace education/peace studies among schoolchildren and undergraduates, the historical record of the last fifty years or so provides a far different picture. It presents a progression of peace education/peace studies in our society today from an antidote to the science of war to a comprehensive examination of the causes of violence and related strategies for peace. The evolution of peace education in the United States since the 1950s is characterized by four developments: (1) disarmament schemes of international law in reaction to the horrors of World War II; (2) the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War; (3) response to President Reagan’s ramping up the arms race in the 1980s; and (4) a holistic form of peace and justice studies marked by efforts on peer mediation, conflict resolution, and environmental awareness. Clearly, in the last fifty years, marked by debate and evolution, peace education—citizen-based and academically sanctioned—has achieved intellectual legitimacy and is worthy of historical analysis.

]]> Ian Harris et al. Pushing Me Through: A Poetic Representation http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/5 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/5 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:50:43 PST For many children and adults labeled learning disabled (LD), the very process of being identified and eventually labeled is oriented to as difficult to understand, disorienting, and just a taken-for-granted part of a system that names some ‘normal’, even gifted, while others are named abnormal. Minimal research exists that attends to the ways in which the official ways of talking about LDs are worked up in the everyday language of those most involved in the special education process, particularly the students themselves. Thus, in this article, we present, in an alternative form of writing (Richardson, 1997), a poetic representation of the words and experiences of one of our participants – Katrina – a student who participated in our research study.

]]> Jessica Nina Lester et al. Instant Racism http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/4 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/4 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:50:40 PST Ubiquitous messages are, by definition, everywhere and therefore familiar to us. Due to the nature of attention, the familiar often gets past critical filters because it feels so comfortable. After all, there is nothing different or alarming about the familiar. I am interested in the powerful ability of graphic design to reframe the ubiquitous because once we see something differently, we never see it the same again.

I was inspired to create this work after reading Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America in which author Micki McElya critically examines the image of Aunt Jemima in the American imagination. It is my wish to disrupt the contemporary viewer’s concept of the pancake box and invite a critical reading of the imagery because the package design originated from a legacy of slavery, but still sits on store shelves today.

]]> Vickie R. Phipps Editors' Introduction http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/3 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/3 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:50:37 PST It is with great pride that we present to you the inaugural issue of Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum. Here we have attempted to create an innovative, peer-reviewed space in which people from numerous disciplines, or even those claiming no discipline, can present research, multimedia, and art aimed at furthering the ideals of social justice, broadly defined. Social justice is not a concept owned by the academy, for attempts to create a more just world can come from many professions, or even from no profession at all. By applying the traditionally academic peer-review process to work done by activists, artists, academics and others, we hope to retain the best aspects of the digital world, such as ease of creation and access, while producing high quality work in the face of a world threatened by information overload.

]]> Shane Willson et al. Front Matter: CSJF Volume One, Issue One http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/2 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/2 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:50:34 PST Editors CSJF Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum, Volume One, Issue One http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/1 http://trace.tennessee.edu/catalyst/vol1/iss1/1 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:50:31 PST It is with great pride that we present to you the inaugural issue of Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum. Here we have attempted to create an innovative, peer-reviewed space in which people from numerous disciplines, or even those claiming no discipline, can present research, multimedia, and art aimed at furthering the ideals of social justice, broadly defined. Social justice is not a concept owned by the academy, for attempts to create a more just world can come from many professions, or even from no profession at all. By applying the traditionally academic peer-review process to work done by activists, artists, academics and others, we hope to retain the best aspects of the digital world, such as ease of creation and access, while producing high quality work in the face of a world threatened by information overload.

The purpose of this journal is to create a space for dynamic conversations that allow us to think about what social justice means and how we may be able to actualize such an ephemeral yet necessary idea.

]]> Shane Willson et al.