Reclaiming the collective: Restorative justice, structural violence, and the search for democratic identity under global capitalism
Item
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Title
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Reclaiming the collective: Restorative justice, structural violence, and the search for democratic identity under global capitalism
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:c001c3f4f29e:10942
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identifier
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11199
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Creator
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Utheim, Ragnhild,
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Contributor
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Leith Mullings
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Date
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2011
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Cultural anthropology | Alternative dispute resolution | Court-involved Youth | Public Education | Race | Restorative Justice | Youth Justice
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Abstract
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Restorative Justice (and its practices) has come to represent an increasingly popular 'alternative' in the fight towards building safe and healthy urban communities that do not rely on prisons and punishment as a solution to the dislocations of advanced capitalism. This ethnographic study examines the role of race and US collective identity at the intersections of criminal justice, public education and restorative justice. The dissertation examines the use of restorative practices for navigating conflicts among court-involved youth at an urban high school, and the extent to which the restorative framework lives up to one of its central ideals: to bring about a more democratically oriented distribution of power in conflict intervention and give voice to all stakeholders. In probing this fundamental ingredient of the restorative approach the research lens was redirected toward a ubiquitous "politics of denial" in confronting the deeper roots of US social conflicts. The dissertation investigates the emergence of restorative conflict negotiations as a field of practice that claims "neutrality" and "impartiality" in its deliberations, yet at once by and large entirely evades the reality of a politically and economically skewed 'playing field.' The research findings reveal the impact of structural violence in the lives of urban youth, and foregrounds the need for full-spectrum, integrated intervention that incorporates various dimensions of trauma (individual, collective, historical) derived from structural violence. The relationship between historical misrepresentation and its attenuated processes, on the one hand, and the human relations and social structures that exist as part of broader society---or collective whole---on the other, are explored. The author argues that the ways in which history has been incompletely represented needs to be a central component of integrated social approaches, including restorative conflict negotiations. For restorative justice to remain true to its democratic processes and participatory dictates, its 'practices' must bring to bear the weight of history and how it has placed groups of people at highly differential advantages. The dissertation argues for the deconstructing of an exceedingly slanted (white) historical master-narrative, and the veritable potential of restorative practices for navigating the political and psychosocial effects that this will provoke.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Anthropology
