Creative Justice

Creative Justice examines issues of inequality and injustice in the cultural industries and the cultural workplace. It offers a comprehensive and considered account of the state-of-the field in cultural studies and sociological thinking about cultural and creative industries work, education and employment, and seeks to address fundamental questions about the constitution of equality and inequality in the creative industries.

Originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, this volume explores how researchers, educators, artists, and scholars can collaborate with, and engage young people in art, creative practice, and research to work towards social justice and political engagement. By critically interrogating the dominant discourses, cultural, and structural obstacles that we all face today, this volume explores the potential of critical arts pedagogies and community-based research projects to empower young people as agents of social change. Chapters offer nuanced analyses of the limits of arts-based social justice collaborations, and grapple with key ethical, practical, and methodological issues that can arise in creative approaches to youth participatory action research. Theoretical contributions are enhanced by Notes from the Field, which highlight prime examples of arts-based youth work occurring across North America. As a whole, the volume powerfully advocates for collaborative creative practices that facilitate young people to build power, hope, agency, and skills through creative social engagement. This volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers, postgraduate students, and scholar-practitioners involved in community- and arts-based research and education, as well as those working with marginalized youth to improve their opportunities and access to a quality education and to deepen their political participation and engagement in intergenerational partnerships aiming to increase the conditions for social justice.

Most of us are content to see ourselves as ordinary people—unique in ways, talented in others, but still among the ranks of ordinary mortals. Andrew Flescher probes our contented state by asking important questions: How should "ordinary" people respond when others need our help, whether the situation is a crisis, or something less? Do we have a responsibility, an obligation, to go that extra mile, to act above and beyond the call of duty? Or should we leave the braver responses to those who are somehow different than we are: better somehow, "heroes," or "saints?" Traditional approaches to ethics have suggested there is a sharp distinction between ordinary people and those called heroes and saints; between duties and acts of supererogation (going beyond the expected). Flescher seeks to undo these standard dichotomies by looking at the lives and actions of certain historical figures—Holocaust rescuers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, among others—who appear to be extraordinary but were, in fact, ordinary people. Heroes, Saints, and Ordinary Morality shifts the way we regard ourselves in relationship to those we admire from afar—it asks us not only to admire, but to emulate as well—further, it challenges us to actively seek the acquisition of virtue as seen in the lives of heroes and saints, to learn from them, a dynamic aspect of ethical behavior that goes beyond the mere avoidance of wrongdoing. Andrew Flescher sets a stage where we need to think and act, calling us to lead lives of self-examination—even if that should sometimes provoke discomfort. He asks that we strive to emulate those we admire and therefore allow ourselves to grow morally, and spiritually. It is then that the individual develops a deeper altruistic sense of self—a state that allows us to respond as the heroes of our own lives, and therefore in the lives of others, when times and circumstance demand that of us.

This scholarly synthesis of biblical studies and Christian social ethics is designed to provide a biblical argument for intentional institutional change on behalf of social justice. Stephen Charles Mott provides a biblical and ethical guide on ways to implement that change. The first part of the book, providing the biblical theology of intentional social change, deals with the central concepts in biblical and theological ethics: grace, evil, love, justice, and the Reign of God. Christian social change must be rooted not only in justice, but in the grace received through the death and resurrection of Christ. The second part evaluates ethical and theological methods for carrying out that intentional social change. It offers a study of evangelism, counter community, civil disobedience, armed revolution, and political reform. It shows the contribution of each as well as the strong limitations of each used in isolation. A recurring theme of the book is the scriptural insistence on the priority of justice as taking upon oneself the cause of the oppressed. Justice is understood on bringing back into the community those who are near to falling out of it. Political authority has a vital role in social change for justice. It is essential that a Christian use all available and legitimate means of meeting basic needs by providing for all what is essential for inclusion in society. In this revised edition, Mott updates the contemporary illustrations and includes his own further reflections in the last thirty years on this topic.

What do you see when you look around? Where does it lead, and to what end? Is there some purpose to it all? And if so, where do you fit in? And how might we fit in together? Maybe you have a faith but desire greater understanding. Maybe you had a faith and are disillusioned. Or maybe you want a faith but are skeptical. This book invites another look. It begins a conversation. Who is God? What is faith? What does God want from us? Why suffering? Why worship? Why work? Through these and other everyday questions, this book suggests possible answers. Answers don't arrest thought. Answers provoke thought and action--life. This book invites readers to look around so that they might discover a faith for the twenty-first century, a faith in conversation with science, a faith fit for deep personal questions, a faith ready to engage complex public issues. Like Moses on Mount Pisgah wondering about a land he could see but never enter, when looking around we may be awakened to hope.

Do the laws of nature prohibit the possibility of direct divine intervention? After the crucifixion, did God really present Jesus in some form to disciples and to others? What is the core of Jesus' good news ("gospel"), how does it differ from Paul's good news, and how relevant is it to today's world? A physics teacher gives his personal answers to these questions.

This edited volume offers a contemporary rethinking of the relationship between love and care in the context of neoliberal practices of professionalization and work. Each of the book's three sections interrogates a particular site of care, where the affective, political, legal, and economic dimensions of care intersect in challenging ways. These sites are located within a variety of institutionally managed contexts such as the contemporary university, the theatre hall, the prison complex, the family home, the urban landscape, and the care industry. The geographical spread of the case studies stretches across India, Vietnam, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa, the UK and the US and provides broad coverage that crosses the divide between the Global North and the Global South. To address this transnational interdisciplinary field of study, the collection utilises insights from across the humanities and social sciences and includes contributions from literature, sociology, cultural and media studies, philosophy, feminist theory, theatre, art history, and education. These inquiries build on a variety of conceptual tools and research methods, from data analysis to psychoanalytic reading. Love and the Politics of Care delivers an attentive and widely relevant examination of the politics of care and makes a compelling case for an urgent reconsideration of the methods that currently structure and regulate it.

This book showcases innovative justice initiatives from around the world which engage offenders, practitioners and communities to reduce reoffending and support desistance and positive change. It is groundbreaking in bringing together inspiring ideas and pioneering practices to analyse how ‘justice done differently’ is making a difference. The voices and experiences of the people at the forefront of these innovative initiatives are presented throughout the book, including offenders, corrections staff and directors, the judiciary, scientists and academics, volunteers and community organisations. Strengths-based research methods are used to investigate and celebrate best practices and ‘good news stories’ from the field. The authors raise critical questions about what is considered innovative and effective, for whom and in what context, presenting their own conceptual approach for analysing innovation. With initiatives drawn from diverse jurisdictions and cultures – including the UK, Europe, Australia, Asia, the US and South America – this book showcases original ideas and refreshing developments that have the potential to transform rehabilitation and reintegration practices. The book’s substance and style will resonate with practitioners, students and academics across the interdisciplinary fields of criminology and criminal justice.