Dilemmas Of Allyship

Dilemmas of Allyship investigates the political phenomenon of social justice allyship—in the form of white anti-racism—from a novel perspective. The book argues that 21st-century allyship is best understood as a set of socially mediated personal problems and challenges, and that these problems and challenges furnish the material with which many allies’ identities are formed. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with white American anti-racist activists, Dilemmas of Allyship provides a picture of the ambivalent struggles with which allies grapple, tracing the “theoretically irreducible” contradictions they regularly encounter. These contradictions, or dilemmas, are central to the ongoing project of many white activists’ allyship, presenting them again and again with challenges that test their authenticity and commitment. The book also investigates how these same dilemmas can become “practically reducible” through a set of mitigating factors and strategies that intervene in and redefine allyship crises. Taken together, these analyses present a picture of allyship rarely seen: one of a lifestyle intrinsically marked by the kinds of challenges people typically avoid. Dilemmas of Allyship takes allies on their own terms, paying attention to the true ambivalence of their struggles, refusing to reduce these experiences to mere success or failure. As a result, it is able to contribute to discussions of identity politics and “white fragility” by presenting a clear picture of the existential stakes of allyship. With this picture in hand, we can better appreciate what challenges exist within the 21st-century movement for racial justice—and we can also learn something more fundamental about what it means to be a person in a contested, conflictual social world.

This open access book argues for allyship masculinity as an open-ended, intersectional model for feminist men. It provides a roadmap for navigating between toxic masculinity on one side, and feminist androgyny on the other. Normative visions for what men should be take many forms. For some it is love and mindfulness; for others, wildness and heroic virtue. For still others the desire to separate a healthy manhood from toxic masculinity is a mistake: better to refuse to be men and salvage our humanity. Though Ben Almassi challenges the visions that Mary Wollstonecraft, bell hooks, and others have offered, he shares their belief that masculinity can be grounded in feminist values and practices. Almassi argues that we can make sense of relational allyship as practices of feminist masculinity, such that men can make distinctive and constructive contributions to gender justice in the unjust meantime.

The #1 international best seller In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg reignited the conversation around women in the workplace. Sandberg is chief operating officer of Facebook and coauthor of Option B with Adam Grant. In 2010, she gave an electrifying TED talk in which she described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which has been viewed more than six million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto. Lean In continues that conversation, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can. Sandberg provides practical advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career. She describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment, and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women both in the workplace and at home. Written with humor and wisdom, Lean In is a revelatory, inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth that will empower women around the world to achieve their full potential.

"This book combines historical and geographical analysis of the direct provision asylum system with a theoretical analysis of the disavowal of the system by state and society and first-person narrative of the lived experience"--

How does a white person who aspires to be an ally against racism talk to their friends and family who are in denial about racism against people of color? The White Ally Toolkit Workbook gives people concrete guidance about how to respond a wide variety of statements that racism-denying white folks make everyday. In addition, the workbook presents a sequenced curriculum that an ally can use if they want to purposefully change someone in the circle of influence as well as reflection and self-assessment tools that will help allies see themselves more clearly. These tools help allies refine their interactions with others so they can move the needle on the large-scale racism denial among the whites about American's most pressing and long-standing problem.

Feminist social work has clear goals to expose and critically analyse gendered power as a dynamic, historic, and structural concept embedded in our world, and to mobilise and take social action to challenge that power. This is integral to a commitment to the core values of the social work profession, which include a commitment to human rights, social justice and professional integrity. This edited collection brings a range of academic and practitioner scholarship to centre feminist theories, values and knowledge as they apply to social work practice, theory and education. It engages with feminist thinking to re-emphasise and refocus the centrality of gender and its intersections with other axes of identities such as social class, race, disability, sexuality and age, for understanding and analysing social work practice. This collection is a timely reminder of what feminist inquiry has to offer social work to successfully address contemporary challenges and is applicable to practitioners, scholars, educators, students and other key care professionals and policy makers.

Settler societies habitually frame Indigenous people as ‘a people of the past’—their culture somehow ‘frozen’ in time, their identities tied to static notions of ‘authenticity’, and their communities understood as ‘in decline’. But this narrative erases the many ways that Indigenous people are actively engaged in future-orientated practice, including through new technologies. Indigenous Digital Life offers a broad, wide-ranging account of how social media has become embedded in the lives of Indigenous Australians. Centring on ten core themes—including identity, community, hate, desire and death—we seek to understand both the practice and broader politics of being Indigenous on social media. Rather than reproducing settler narratives of Indigenous ‘deficiency’, we approach Indigenous social media as a space of Indigenous action, production, and creativity; we see Indigenous social media users as powerful agents, who interact with and shape their immediate worlds with skill, flair and nous; and instead of being ‘a people of the past’, we show that Indigenous digital life is often future-orientated, working towards building better relations, communities and worlds. This book offers new ideas, insights and provocations for both students and scholars of Indigenous studies, media and communication studies, and cultural studies.

In this highly original and much-needed book, Clare Land interrogates the often fraught endeavours of activists from colonial backgrounds seeking to be politically supportive of Indigenous struggles. Blending key theoretical and practical questions, Land argues that the predominant impulses which drive middle-class settler activists to support Indigenous people cannot lead to successful alliances and meaningful social change unless they are significantly transformed through a process of both public political action and critical self-reflection. Based on a wealth of in-depth, original research, and focussing in particular on Australia, where – despite strident challenges – the vestiges of British law and cultural power have restrained the nation's emergence out of colonizing dynamics, Decolonizing Solidarity provides a vital resource for those involved in Indigenous activism and scholarship.