In this important book, experts from around the globe come together to examine what solidarity in multicultural societies might mean and how it might be built. With a variety of analytical perspectives and findings, the authors present original research conducted in the United States, New Zealand, Spain, France, Chile, Mexico, and India. Educators will recognize relationships between issues discussed in the book and their own places of work, helping them to better understand issues of diversity and take steps toward building solidarity in their own schools and communities. This book demonstrates the commonality of purpose across the globe to connect schools and teachers with the communities they serve, and suggests avenues for bringing diverse understandings together to bridge antagonism and fear. Contributors: Isabelle Aliaga, Gilberto Arriaza, Andrés Calderón, Maria Antonia Casanova, Juan Francisco Contreras, Dolores Delgado Bernalis, Gina E. DeShera, Martine Dreyfus, Judith Flores Carmona, Anne Hynds, Verónica López, Mahendra Kumar Mishra, Carmen Montecinos, José Luis Ramos, José Ignacio Rodríguez, and Alice Wagner. Christine E. Sleeter is professor emerita in the College of Professional Studies at California State University Monterey Bay, and President of the National Association for Multicultural Education. Her recent books include Teaching with Vision (with Catherine Cornbleth). Encarnación Soriano is professor of research methods in education at the University of Almería, Spain. “Whether educators are working with student populations perceived as diverse or homogeneous, Creating Solidarity Across Diverse Communities provides profound insights into strategies for building consensus, efficacy, and reducing prejudice and conflict. This is a well-researched volume on complex theories and diverse practices for building solidarity to effect educational change.” —Merry M. Merryfield, School of Teaching and Learning, The Ohio State University
Geopolitical changes combined with the increasing urgency of ambitious climate action have re-opened debates about justice and international climate policy. Mechanisms and insights from transitional justice have been used in over thirty countries across a range of conflicts at the interface of historical responsibility and imperatives for collective futures. However, lessons from transitional justice theory and practice have not been systematically explored in the climate context. The comparison gives rise to new ideas and strategies that help address climate change dilemmas. This book examines the potential of transitional justice insights to inform global climate governance. It lays out core structural similarities between current global climate governance tensions and transitional justice contexts. It explores how transitional justice approaches and mechanisms could be productively applied in the climate change context. These include responsibility mechanisms such as amnesties, legal accountability measures, and truth commissions, as well as reparations and institutional reform. The book then steps beyond reformist transitional justice practice to consider more transformative approaches, and uses this to explore a wider set of possibilities for the climate context. Each chapter presents one or more concrete proposals arrived at by using ideas from transitional justice and applying them to the justice tensions central to the global climate context. By combining these two fields the book provides a new framework through which to understand the challenges of addressing harms and strengthening collective climate action. This book will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners of climate change and transitional justice.
In Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity, Gaye Theresa Johnson examines interracial anti-racist alliances, divisions among aggrieved minority communities, and the cultural expressions and spatial politics that emerge from the mutual struggles of Blacks and Chicanos in Los Angeles from the 1940s to the present. Johnson argues that struggles waged in response to institutional and social repression have created both moments and movements in which Blacks and Chicanos have unmasked power imbalances, sought recognition, and forged solidarities by embracing the strategies, cultures, and politics of each others' experiences. At the center of this study is the theory of spatial entitlement: the spatial strategies and vernaculars utilized by working class youth to resist the demarcations of race and class that emerged in the postwar era. In this important new book, Johnson reveals how racial alliances and antagonisms between Blacks and Chicanos in L.A. had spatial as well as racial dimensions.
In many countries, particularly in the Global North, established forms of solidarity within communities are said to be challenged by the increasing ethnic and cultural diversity of the population. Against the backdrop of renewed geopolitical tensions – which inflate and exploit ethno-cultural, rather than political-economic cleavages – concerns are raised that ethnic and cultural diversity challenge both the formal mechanisms of redistribution and informal acts of charity, reciprocity and support which underpin common notions of community. This book focuses on the innovative forms of solidarity that develop around the joint appropriation and the envisaged common future of specific places. Drawing on examples from schools, streets, community centres, workplaces, churches, housing projects and sporting projects, it provides an alternative research agenda from the 'loss of community' narrative. It reflects on the different spatiotemporal frames in which solidarities are nurtured, the connections forged between solidarity and citizenship, and the role of interventions by professionals to nurture solidarity in diversity. This timely and original work will be essential reading for those working in human geography, sociology, ethnic studies, social work, urban studies, political studies and cultural studies.
Several sociological theories of intergroup contact, diversity, and social trust carry competing implications for political participation in diverse communities. Most controversially, Robert Putnam's "hunkering down" hypothesis argues that diversity decreases in- and out-group community trust, yet Putnam observes--in the same paper--higher levels of participation in forms that demand high trust and solidarity in more diverse communities. I test the varying theoretical implications of the contact, conflict, and "hunkering down" hypotheses on community political participation using the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-election Survey, leveraging the dataset's large oversamples of racial minorities in the United States to paint a fuller picture of the relationships between participation, threat, and diversity. I explore to what extent community racial diversity, out-group threat, and structural neighborhood characteristics are associated with political participation. Using regression analyses, the project attempts to resolve debates around diversity and trust by theorizing and testing the implications of existing theories on community political participation. While I find that out-group threat consistently predicts less political participation and neighborhood characteristics explain some variation in political participation for minority Americans, diversity is not robustly associated with political participation for most racial groups. I explore potential reasons as to why and suggest future paths for research.
Digital Solidarity in Education is a book for educators, scholars, and students interested in better understanding both the role technology can play in schools and its potential for strengthening communities, optimizing the effects of globalization, and increasing educational access. The digital solidarity movement prioritizes the engagement and mobilization of students from diverse racial, ethnic, linguistic, and economic backgrounds, and with giftedness and/or disabilities, to utilize and apply technologies. This powerful book introduces innovative technological programs including virtual schools, e-tutoring, and interactive online communities for K-12 students that can: • increase students' knowledge and understanding of advanced concepts while reinforcing their basic skills; • reinforce students' communication in their first language while introducing second and third language possibilities; • nurture students' capabilities to think analytically, while using creative and innovative ideas to think simultaneously “outside of the box.” The experienced author team shows how collaborative partners from the private sector can assist public school systems and educators in creating access for all students to technological innovations, with a goal of increasing individual opportunities for future college and career success. Combining theoretical scholarship and research with the personal perspectives of practitioners in the field, this volume shares with readers both the nuts and bolts of using technology in education, and the importance of doing so.
This book combines radical history, critical geography, and political theory in an innovative history of the solidarity campaign in London during the 1984-5 miners’ strike. Thousands of people collected food and money, joined picket lines and demonstrations, organised meetings, travelled to mining areas, and hosted coalfield activists in their homes during the strike. The support campaign encompassed longstanding elements of the British labour movement as well as autonomously organised Black, lesbian and gay, and feminist support groups. This book shows how the solidarity of 1984-5 was rooted in the development of mutual relationships of support between the coalfields and the capital since the late 1960s. It argues that a culture of solidarity was developed through industrial and political struggles that brought together diverse activists from mining communities and London. The book also takes the story forward, exploring the aftermath of the miners’ strike and the complex legacies of the support movement up to the present day. This rich history provides a compelling example of how solidarity can cross geographical and social boundaries. This book is essential reading for students, scholars, and activists with an interest in left-wing politics and history.
High school students, teachers, community members, and leaders come together in this innovative book to share the profound influence of artmaking and justice- oriented work. Authors paint vibrant images of being empowered and engaging in social change. Throughout their art-based meaning making, authors pose critical questions and unlock possibilities. Their first-tellings regarding the power of art provide readers with a lens to understand how they navigate injustices they endure and ways in which artmaking is a vehicle for transformation. Their artmaking is a call for change. Authors emphasize how artmaking bridges relationships and brings diverse community members together with purpose. Together, they engage in new understandings of self and other. Authors identify how their arts-based collaborations publicly showcase their justice-oriented work, but more importantly, promote possibility and hope. Youth explore how artmaking plays a vital role in promoting collective efficacy and engaging diverse communities in social transformation. Artmaking mobilizes people. And once activated, these authors utilize their newly cultivated communities to foster justice-oriented work throughout schools and communities. Their justice-oriented artmaking affords community members opportunities to respond in new ways by embracing community strengths and students’ lived experiences. This authentic collaboration empowers the artmaker and community to promote justice-oriented work and practices centered on diversity and inclusivity. ENDORSEMENTS: Reading Christa Boske’s The Time is Now is to find a profound sense of joy, wholeness, and energy to push out the borders of consciousness too tightly bound to the hyperrationalism of the workday world grounded in materialism and business transactions. The collected authors in Christa’s book give form to the spirit world, and its proclivity to allow the whole human being to embrace it, putter in it, explore it and find themselves in the journey. Artmaking is about self-discovery and emancipation. It’s a must read for anyone who wants re-establish a belief in themselves and in humanity. — Fenwick W. English, Professor and Department Chair, Ball State University Read this compelling new resource if you want to engage the next generation of youth activists in transforming our world. Truly, The Time is Now offers school leaders the most exciting, creative avenues for generating justice we’ve seen in a long time. This book rises to the challenge of being real when so much is at stake. — Margaret Grogan, Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy, Chapman University The Time is Now. A profound title that encapsulates so much regarding what we need in today's world. Woven through the various narratives, we accept the invitation to hear the stories of artists and explorers in their respective communities. An authentic confrontation of the many tensions that exist in our quest to seek out equity in the areas of diversity, inclusivity, and lived experiences. Voices that ring of radical change, the reconceptualization of freedom, and the agentive stance we are called to take to realize a higher state of being and a more noble existence. The stories remind us that the dream of transformation is our most compelling force- this book gives us a map of all that is possible if we work together. — Lillian McEnery-Benavente, Director and Professor, University of Houston Christa Boske’s edited book, The Time is Now, provides readers with a profound sense of what it means to live through injustice. The book, though, is not just a collection of heartbreaking stories, but a chronicle of triumphs, as the previously unheard are finally given a voice through artmaking. In chapter after deeply moving chapter, I was struck by the simultaneous vulnerability and bravery of the artists who shared their stories. What was clear, was that artmaking was a form of awakening for the artmakers: awakening to social justice issues, awakening to their ability to connect to the community through art and even awakening to their own value, which for so many, had been wholly unrecognized prior to this experience. This book comes at a time of deep reflection on equity, diversity and inclusion in our nation and the stories remind us that our children are absorbing these conversations. They are living these experiences and their voices are an essential part of the dialogue. — Habeebah R. Grimes, Chief Executive Officer
It is commonly assumed that we live in an age of unbridled individualism, but in this important new book Montserrat Guibernau argues that the need to belong to a group or community - from peer groups and local communities to ethnic groups and nations - is a pervasive and enduring feature of modern social life. The power of belonging stems from the potential to generate an emotional attachment capable of fostering a shared identity, loyalty and solidarity among members of a given community. It is this strong emotional dimension that enables belonging to act as a trigger for political mobilization and, in extreme cases, to underpin collective violence. Among the topics examined in this book are identity as a political instrument; emotions and political mobilization; the return of authoritarianism and the rise of the new radical right; symbols and the rituals of belonging; loyalty, the nation and nationalism. It includes case studies from Britain, Spain, Catalonia, Germany, the Middle East and the United States. This wide-ranging and cutting-edge book will be of great interest to students and scholars in politics, sociology and the social sciences generally.
