Abstract
In Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn: Building Coalitions for Action, Rebecca Walton, Kristen R. Moore, and Natasha N. Jones endeavor to respond to why injustice is a technical communication problem. Advocating for coalition building as a framework for integrating principles of social justice in technical and professional communication (TPC), the authors contend that problems of social injustice are more pernicious than other kinds of problems. To make our field more inclusive and action-oriented through coalition building, the text explores the need for orienting our work toward social justice research and practice in TPC. Divided into three parts as (I) Laying the Groundwork, (II) Strategically Contemplating the 3Ps, and (III) Building Coalitions, Section I includes two chapters for conceptual exploration of oppression and justice. Section II consists of three chapters entitled “Positionality,” “Privilege,” and “Power” (3Ps) in order to build upon the foundation laid in Section I by retheorizing the central concepts of 3Ps. Section III that equips technical communicators and community members for action includes two chapters that are devoted to the application of the concepts in a variety of contexts, including academic programs, community organizations, and industries.
Identifying and directly addressing the problems that are yet to be addressed by technical and professional communication researchers and practitioners (TPCers), the authors home in on drawing upon scholars and activists outside TPC to engage with the difficulties we TPCers face. The Introduction addresses three key problems: an inclusion and representation problem, social justice as a sexy topic, and fear of being paralyzed at the thought of getting social justice work wrong. The authors note that the representation problem in TPC continues as long as the works of minority scholars are relegated to the margins of the field by citing voices of the privileged (i.e., White, male, patriarchal scholars in the field). To develop diverse and inclusive representation, the overabundance of citations of minority scholars is not enough; we must also commit to promoting diversity through inclusive representation in our classrooms, programs, and leadership. As argued by the authors, “Without this commitment, cycles of exclusion and white supremacy will continue as students and scholars of color decide (perhaps inevitably) to leave a field where their voices and experiences are dismissed, marginalized, and/or co-opted” (p. 3). To make contributions to social justice efforts by recognizing oppression, revealing it to others, and rejecting and replacing unjust practices and behaviors, the authors call upon investing in an intersectional understanding of oppressions and addressing social justice issues through coalitional actions.
In order to address questions such as “Why is oppression a technical communication problem” (p.10) and why does it matter?, Chapter 1 uses political theorist Iris Marion Yong’s five faces of oppression to structure a discussion of oppression by breaking them apart, arguing that the TPC field “historically has done little to articulate oppression as a central concern and still less to define oppression and its systems of domination” (p. 18). Defining and elaborating on the five faces of oppressions (such as marginalization, cultural imperialism, powerlessness, violence, and exploitation) to build a foundation for an intersectional, coalition approach to TPC, the chapter urges the reader to take a new way forward, a new understanding of the field by acknowledging what oppression is and how it operates, the forms it takes, and its effects on people’s lives, particularly within the context of the TPC field. The chapter offers the ways our practices render us complicit in the oppressions of others, raising urgent questions such as: “How can we recognize, reveal, reject, and replace oppression? What is the ideal we seek in its place?” (p. 10). It is where the authors bring justice, advocating for an intersectional approach to eradicating the interconnected oppressions TPC explicitly or implicitly endorses.
Drawing from legal scholars, political theorists, social activists, and others, Chapter 2 is devoted to addressing the key question “What does justice look like, and how is it enacted?” (p. 32). The chapter offers an overview of the various conceptions of justice that imbue our thinking about what can and should happen. Before embarking on social justice, the chapter clearly defines and describes the various forms of justice such as distributive justice (i.e., fairness in the distribution of material goods, resources, and benefits), procedural justice (i.e., fair play of policies and process), and others. Although distributive and procedural justice can be useful for envisioning justice from “what” and “how” perspectives respectively, the chapter argues that they are not well suited to redressing injustice and they alone are too limited to inform TPC after the social justice turn. Therefore, the authors draw three terms—retributive justice (fair punishment for wrongdoing), restorative justice (repairing the harm caused by crime to restore social harmony), and transitional justice (addressing human rights violation at the nation-state level for reconciliation, truth, and accountability)—from legal studies and criminal justice as approaches to redressing harm. The chapter concludes with the discussions of two key characteristics of social justice—collective and action—necessary for redressing systematic and systemic oppressions, setting the stage for a framework of social justice (i.e., intersectional, coalition building—a theory of empowerment) presented in Chapters 3 to 5.
Building on social justice icons such as Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, and Amalia Mesa-Bains, Chapter 3 explores the concept of positionality which is defined as “a way of conceiving subjectivity that simultaneously accounts for the constraints and conditions of context while also allowing for an individual’s action and agency” (p. 63). In contrast to essentialism, social determinism, and dyadic perspectives on identity, the chapter shows how positionality offers an alternative tool for engaging with issues of identity. To engage in coalitional work, the authors assert that we must be attuned to not only our own positionality but also that of others. It is not enough to reflect upon the meaning of one’s identity but also to recognize the range of meanings across the spectrum of people within social groups. (p. 71)
In Chapter 4, the authors distinguish privilege from power and positionality, arguing that “where positionality allows us to understand the complexities of identity, privilege allows us to place that identity within social systems and understand the effects of that placement” (p. 83). As privilege is inherently connected to positionality and power (discussed in Chapter 5) for social justice work, understanding it with regard to TPC’s commitment to social justice facilitates action and redresses inequities along with allowing us to identify how certain groups of people entertain privilege and others are pushed to the margins. Calling on scholars such as Angela Davis, Sara Ahmed, and Andre Lorde as a way of grounding the concept of privilege from a minority or marginal standpoint, the chapter suggests to adopt a multivocal approach to exploring privilege because “the minority experience is not monolithic” (p. 86). Using the concept of ontology as a useful tool to examine what “makes up” privilege as a way of being in the world, the authors assert that ontologies are a useful lens for comprehending privilege because they are shared views of reality and they help us identify constituent components (pp. 87–88). Thus, advocating for an epistemological shift in the way that privilege is framed by exploring its constituent elements, the chapter discusses five interrelated and overlapping ontological paradigms to understand how privilege operates: (a) othering, difference, and individualization; (b) knowledge creation and legitimization; (c) sociocultural, material, and embodied protection; (d) questioning and critical interrogation; and (e) navigating the world and educating others (p. 89). The chapter concludes that as TPCers committed to equity and social justice, we should afford to acknowledge how a reenvisioned theoretical approach to privilege can help TPC progress toward inclusion.
Using Patricia Hill Collins’s Black feminist theory of power, Chapter 5 defines and operationalizes power as shifting, dynamic, and unstable through the lens of oppression and domination in order to prepare TPCers for action-oriented coalition building. Arguing that the work of TPC needs to be intersectional and coalitional to redress inequities and oppression across the domains of power, the chapter does two things to articulate how power enables and constraints social justice, coalition building, and advocacy: (a) it provides a viable theory of power for TPCers to enact social justice and coalition building and (b) it critiques approaches to power as not taking privilege and positionality into consideration. By demonstrating both sites and strategies for redressing inequities in the TPC field in consideration with intersectional coalitional building, positionality, and privilege, the authors chart TPC with some field-specific examples across Collins’s fours domains of power as
Structural: systems of power set up and organized through social institutions or organization. Disciplinary: systems of power organized through bureaucracies (e.g., rules and regulations of everyday life). Hegemonic: systems of power that deal with ideology and culture produced through school curricula and textbooks, social media, and journalism. Interpersonal: systems of power that function through the routine, day to day practices of how people treat one another.
The authors conclude the chapter by connecting the domains of power with coalitional action, intersectionality, positionality, and privilege.
Presenting the 4Rs (recognize, reveal, reject, and replace) as a heuristic for action to address injustice and oppression, Chapter 4 discusses how the heuristic “respond[s] directly to the need for complex, inclusive, intersectional approaches to doing social justice in TPC” (p. 135). To build an inclusive culture of TPC, we need concrete actions that recognize structural oppressions, unjust behaviors, and power systems to redress injustices and empower multiply marginalized members of our community. Articulating the need for developing a culture of inclusivity and social justice, the authors “unapologetically demarcate ideological requirements for engaging in social justice, demanding first that the field develops intersectional understandings of oppression and second that it works toward building coalitions that acknowledge and address intersectional oppressions” (p. 135). The chapter also provides cases where the 4Rs as a heuristic are applied in an effort to ground readers’ understanding of how to recognize, reveal, and reject systemic oppression and replace unjust and oppressive practices with intersectional, coalition-led actions and practices.
Unlike other chapters, the concluding chapter is structured in a Q & A format (THEY SAY, WE SAY) to respond to anticipated critiques and questions waged against the social justice turn in TPC. The authors argue that TPC as a field values critiques and questions as TPC’s social justice works have been improved by such valuable critiques, discussions, questions, and clear answers. The chapter basically reflects the potential questions readers have already or will put forward such as,
What can I—just one person—do about injustices as they are institutionalized and systematic? (p. 163) I would love to read and cite work by marginalized scholars in the TPC field, but are there enough Black, minority, transgender, scholars with disability, etc. in the field? (p. 169)
Offering clear and meaningful answers to those questions, the authors call upon TPCers to develop strategies through intersectional collations for addressing oppressions.
Overall, Walton et al.’s text offers a comprehensive understanding of conditions or sites of social (in)justice in the TPC field, responding to the most pertinent questions such as: “Why is the social justice turn necessary in TPC?” As asserted by the authors, because our field is complicit in injustices, we as a field must overtly purposefully engage these injustices to perceive our own complicity in oppressive intellectual practices. As argued throughout the text, we TPCers have an ethical obligation and imperative to enact social justice, build intersectional coalitions, challenge the deeply rooted systems of power to empower the oppressed, and create social change by generating visions for a socially just future. Although the text is theoretically grounded drawing upon the critical works from scholars outside the TPC field and no glossary is included for quick access to (international) readers new to the topics discussed, it offers important and powerful praxis-oriented approaches to identifying injustices and reinforcing social justice in TPC. Calling for adopting an intersectional, coalition building approach to problem solving, the authors strongly believe that taking such approach allows TPCers to understand how oppression functions in the lives of marginalized, minority group and how oppressive structures are intersecting, interlocking, and interrelated. The text serves as the groundwork for our discipline as mentioned by Angela Hass (in the text’s “Afterword”) “to better understand oppression and justice conceptually, to better develop theoretical and methodological frameworks that support social justice, and to better apply and implement these concepts and frameworks in a variety of academic, community, organizational, and industry contexts” (p. 175). Offering up intersectional, coalition approaches to problem solving, the text reveals the operation of our complicity in social injustices and is an important contribution to the social justice turn in TPC. For these reasons, this first scholarly monograph in the TPC field would serve as an excellent reader for TPC’s graduate-level courses that focus on addressing issues of social justice, diversity, and human rights through sustainable practices of activism.
