In Robyn Penman’s Justice in the Making: Relating, Participating, Communicating, we are asked to consider a complete reconceptualization of justice. What if we inhabit a space where justice is something we make together rather than an abstract, ideal standard for resource distribution, legal decisions, and for moral conduct? This emphasis on what we make together starts not with individuals and their actions but with relational process. Focus is placed on what people are doing together and what sort of world unfolds from those “doings.”

Penman argues, and I fully agree, that justice is a lived experience. And yet, our time-honored, abstract, context-free theories of justice present a one size fits all reality claiming that justice is served when idealized standards are applied. Viewing justice as the accomplishment of relationally engaged interactants pays homage to the complexity of the global world in which we live. It acknowledges the plurality of the emergent values and beliefs constructed as byproducts of our everyday interactions. In suggesting that justice is not something to be achieved but something we create with others, Penman centers on three themes: relating, participating, and communicating. These themes highlight social action as the critical focus for any examination of justice. Further, relational responsivity, responsibility, and reflexivity comprise the grammar of making a just social world.

In this volume, Penman offers an impressive review of established understandings of justice – she addresses racial justice, legal justice, and restorative justice. She thoroughly introduces the limitations of those understandings and offers an alternative that speaks directly to the pragmatic appreciation of possibilities for justice in our lived experience. Centering relating, participating, and communicating directs our attention to the challenges of everyday living. In so doing, justice becomes a performative action as opposed to an abstract standard to be imposed. I highly recommend this book.

Sheila McNamee, PhD
Professor Emerita
University of New Hampshire
Co-Founder and Vice President
Taos Institute