Helping to Promote Social Justice is a richly informed and practical guide for advanced students and young professionals to become helpers capable of promoting social justice with whomever they collaborate with, mentor, serve and consult. Filled with insight and supplemental exercises, the book will direct readers to think critically and reflect on the broader social and political systems that create our current social injustices.
Beginning with a strong theoretical focus on power, social identity and intersectionality, the authors engage with readers’ assumptions on helping, their value systems and their understandings of power and privilege when helping communities in need. The rest of the book focuses on the application of these critical concepts, guiding future helpers to consider how to intervene, assess need, lead, build a team, address conflict and work to promote change from a position of social justice.
Written by academic faculty with expertise in teaching, coaching and consulting, Helping to Promote Social Justice should be considered essential reading for students in social work, psychology and counselling.
Foreword Introduction Part 1. Helping Promote Liberation 1. Going beyond individual helping Debra A. Harkins 2. Deconstructing social identity and intersectionality Kathryn J. Kozak and Debra A. Harkins 3. Learning the role of values in social justice-focused helping Sukanya Ray, Hannah E Robins, Sophia Anyela Joan Kozlowsky, and Yanxi Liu 4. Theorizing power and social justice Kathryn J. Kozak 5. Intervening to support empowerment Lynne-Marie Shea Part 2. Helping Build Empowering Skills 6. Building a team to support a community Elizabeth Robinson and Debra A. Harkins 7. Leading with heart, hope, and hustle in educational contexts Carmen N. Veloria with Amanda Bernasconi 8. Mentoring to promote social justice Lauren I. Grenier, Elizabeth Robinson, and Debra A. Harkins 9. Teaching for critical research Mary Beth Medvide 10. Training and supervising social justice-oriented clinicians Julia Catlin and Lauren Mizock Part 3. Helping Expand Social Justice 11. Researching for social justice Mary Beth Medvide 12. Advocating for public policy Christina Athineos and Debra A. Harkins 13. Writing grants for community building Lynne-Marie Shea and Debra A. Harkins 14. Sharing and disseminating Christina Athineos 15. Building a social justice toolkit Lauren I. Grenier and Debra A. Harkins
Biography
Debra A. Harkins is a professor of education and psychology at Suffolk University. Her current research interests include using action-based research and process consultation models with multicultural, underserved and diverse communities.
Kathryn J. Kozak recently received her doctorate in applied developmental psychology at Suffolk University. Her research focuses on ways in which people come to and engage in social justice work.
Lauren I. Grenier is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Suffolk University, where she works in the Community-Action Based Research lab under the mentorship of Dr. Debra A. Harkins. Lauren’s research focuses on social justice and critical experiential pedagogy, particularly in the context of higher education through service-learning.
Lynne-Marie Shea is a fourth-year clinical doctoral student in psychology at Suffolk University. Under the mentorship of Dr. Debra Harkins, Lynne’s clinical work revolves around community-based and systems-focused interventions for in-risk adolescents, and her research focuses on critical consciousness building, civic engagement, and holistic health and wellness.
Helping Promote Social Justice offers a field guide to helpers working to promote social justice. It offers practical strategies for engaging in research, teaching and supervision, community-based interventions, public policy, and more. The focus on skill building make this text stand out among its peers. The exercises provided throughout the book engage the reader in critical reflection and active learning. It is evident that the authors are deeply committed to the practice of social justice and their reflections on their own social identities, processes, and professional development are refreshing and inspirational.
Britney G Brinkman, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology, Point Park UniversityThe quest for social justice is a constant challenge in our society, and efforts to both inform and guide us as practitioners and academics are always in desperate need. Helping Promote Social Justice , edited by Debra A. Harkins, Kathryn J. Kozak, Lauren Grenier, and Lynne-Marie Shea, is a welcome contribution to this field of study because of how it successfully bridges the gaps between knowledge, theory, and practice. This bridge is critical to helping us transform our society into a socially just one for significant excluded portions of our country. Readers will be rewarded by reading this book because of the tools it brings for seeking social justice!
Melvin Delgado, Ph.D., Professor of Social Work, Boston University School of Social WorkWhile our desires to be of use to others may be simply and clearly felt, the pathways to ethically embody these desires become clear only upon sustained critical reflection. Helping Promote Social Justice bears the task of necessarily complicating the desire to help others, while offering ways to navigate with accountability helping professionals’ engagement with social justice issues. Readers are guided to explore the effects of their positionality on the work they do, carefully taking account of privilege and power. This well-researched and clearly written volume is the fruit of the authors’ decades of experience in service-learning mentorship and is a needed complement to service-learning curriculum.
Mary Watkins , Ph.D., Author of Mutual Accompaniment and the Creation of the Commons and co-author of Towards Psychologies of Liberation
