Sorting by

×

JUSTICE IN THE MAKING:

Relating, Participating, Communicating

jitm 1
  • Why don’t measures relying on distributive justice really seem to solve social justice problems?
  • How can we account for the persistence of racist injustice, despite good intentions?
  • How well is justice really served in our adversarial system in courts?
  • Are procedural justice measures really good enough?
  • Has restorative justice been co-opted and compromised by the conventional justice system?

To address these questions, and more, Robyn Penman invites you to explore with her what it can mean to reimagine justice as something we make together in the dynamic process of relating and communicating, with all its uncertainties and open-endedness. She draws particularly on ideas from the relational turn in philosophy, on pragmatism, on social constructionism, and on a communication perspective.

Using a relational-communication framework, Robyn Penman shows how it is possible to pick up the threads of recent critiques and reform proposals in the justice literature and transform them into something so much better. In doing so, she develops a rich grammar, including concepts such as relational responsivity and responsibility, to account for the dynamics of making justice. She also offers new insights and possibilities towards acting justly in an ongoing co-created process.

Should be widely read and used

I’m totally blown away by the depth and scope of your research, and the elegant way you’ve managed to distill so much information and present it in such a compelling manner… I very much hope it will be widely read and used, and I’ll certainly be recommending it.

~Susan Brooks , Professor of Law, Drexel University

Purveying the landscape of our justice systems

To put it simply, you have done a remarkable and hopeful job of purveying the landscape of our justice systems, finding them wanting, and proposing an alternative that finally addresses the issues as “problems of the will” that must be addressed at the level of our will to do better, to live better, to enact justice moment by moment as well as in the big moments when people’s lives and self-respect are at stake. I love so much about this book. Not only does it do the job you set out to do, but it also has provided me with new ways of describing and applying the communication perspective and the relational framework. A masterful effort.

~Arthur Jensen, Emeritus Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Syracuse University

Transformative potential

Justice in the Making “is an important book. It demonstrates throughout the transformative potential of social construction thinking and doing.”

~ John Stewart, Emeritus Professor, University of Dubuque

CMM Institute