What does living towards justice look, feel, and sound like in everyday life?
The UA Embodiment, Communication, and Health Open Co-lab (ECHO) is directing a collaborative project called Living Justice. Directed by anthropologist and practitioner of Chinese medicine, Dr. Sonya Pritzker, the project aims to develop artistic, educational, and experiential as well as agentive materials depicting what living towards justice looks, feels, and sounds like in everyday life. FAQ are posted below
UPDATE August 16, 2022: We are filled with deep gratitude, awe, and humility at how many folks seemed to immediately resonate with the project! We are currently full for the next several months, but stay tuned for updates!
Living Justice Team
Interested?
We are looking for 30-50 collaborators engaged in learning, teaching, or otherwise working to enact embodied social justice (ESJ) in in everyday life. All collaborators have the choice to participate as named contributors/co-authors or fully or partially anonymously. The project includes several distinct and optional components, each of which can be conducted entirely remotely and can be scheduled according to your comfort and availability.
*Creating group Time Capsules aligns with our commitment to strengthening community and inviting vulnerable conversations about what it means to live towards justice from a range of different social and geographic locations. It is also consistent with the Time Capsule method in documentary film, where people throughout the world or in a specific locale contribute footage that is then threaded with contributions from others to provide many perspectives on a single period of time (as in the Life in a Day series).
As a small token of appreciation, all collaborators will be offered a $50 electronic gift card upon completion of the interview, and will receive an additional $100 upon completion of the Time Capsule
If you are interested in participating, you can express interest, post questions, and schedule the initial remote interview here. There is also an emergent FAQ section below. You can also always contact us directly by emailing us at livingjustice.ua@gmail.com or calling 205-462-8688.
UPDATE August 16, 2022: We are filled with deep gratitude, awe, and humility at how many folks seemed to immediately resonate with the project! We are currently full for the next several months, but stay tuned for updates!
Living Justice Team
Interested?
We are looking for 30-50 collaborators engaged in learning, teaching, or otherwise working to enact embodied social justice (ESJ) in in everyday life. All collaborators have the choice to participate as named contributors/co-authors or fully or partially anonymously. The project includes several distinct and optional components, each of which can be conducted entirely remotely and can be scheduled according to your comfort and availability.
- Conversation or “Interview”: This component includes a 60-90-minute conversation about new collaborators’ backgrounds understanding and experience of in/justice in the world; your experience of the relational and social worlds of embodied social justice; and the embodied practices that you rely on to sustain and uplift your work. It is also an opportunity for potential collaborators to become further acquainted with the research team and the project as a whole.
- Time Capsule: The Living Justice Time Capsule involves 3-5 days of reflective journaling using an intuitive app that allows collaborators to enter photographs, videos, audio-recordings, and/or text responses to a series of prompts as well as open-ended submissions about your embodied, lived experience during the time you are participating. It also includes three optional projects invite collaborators to record, photograph, and narrate specific features of their home, neighborhood, and/or workspace(s). There is, finally, a “consent” project that you can open in order to record verbal consents from anyone you want to photograph or record (can apply to any of the other tasks or projects). The Time Capsule can be done individually and scheduled according to collaborator comfort and availability OR (update!!) it can be done at the same time as a group of 10-20 others with whom collaborators will have multiple opportunities to connect if they choose to do so.
*Creating group Time Capsules aligns with our commitment to strengthening community and inviting vulnerable conversations about what it means to live towards justice from a range of different social and geographic locations. It is also consistent with the Time Capsule method in documentary film, where people throughout the world or in a specific locale contribute footage that is then threaded with contributions from others to provide many perspectives on a single period of time (as in the Life in a Day series).
- Physiological Monitoring: To be able to link particular moments during the initial interview as well as the Time Capsule to subtle shifts in physiological arousal and de-arousal, all collaborators will be invited to wear an Empatica wristband (the E4) for up to 60 hours during the Time Capsule. The E4 measures changes in certain electrical properties of the skin (EDA), reads peripheral skin temperature, and measures Blood Volume Pulse (BVP), from which heart rate variability can be derived. The E4 also includes an Event Mark Button that collaborators can use to tag events and link them to physiological signals.
As a small token of appreciation, all collaborators will be offered a $50 electronic gift card upon completion of the interview, and will receive an additional $100 upon completion of the Time Capsule
If you are interested in participating, you can express interest, post questions, and schedule the initial remote interview here. There is also an emergent FAQ section below. You can also always contact us directly by emailing us at livingjustice.ua@gmail.com or calling 205-462-8688.
Frequently Asked Questions
General
Analysis will be ongoing, both during and after all in-person interviews and each Time Capsule. It will be organized into categories in multiple ways, including the hashtags added to particular entries by collaborators as well as in NVIVO, the data analysis software that we use at ECHO. Categories or “themes” will also be identified through emergent and grounded coding processes. There is ultimately no limit to the themes that will emerge. Some likely preliminary themes, however, include hope, temporality, relationality, and lived experiences of in/justice, just to name a few.
Living Justice therefore adopts an in-depth ethnographic approach that investigates the ways in which interaction, memory, and unspoken relational experience is associated with physiology on a day-to-day basis. The project is also grounded in both person-centered ethnography, which seeks to understand culture through deep-dives into individual lived experience as well as microphenomenology, a method that draws upon in-depth reflective conversations to understand the full embodied dynamics of particular moments and encounters. You can read more about microphenomenology here.
Living Justice is also based upon Dr. Pritzker’s previous research on language and embodiment in the practice of Chinese medicine (Pritzker 2012); the practice of family constellation and inner child therapies as “technologies of the social” in Beijing, China (Pritzker & Duncan 2019; relational co-embodiment among couples in the Southeastern U.S.; and embodiment, intimacy, and temporality in everyday interaction (Pritzker & Perrino 2020, Pritzker 2020). (if you are interested in reviewing any of these references, they are available here)
Living Justice is also specifically based upon an extensive first phase of research, which began in 2020 and extended through 2021. In addition to interviews, we read and listened a lot. We participated in the full ESJ Certificate Program, for example, after which we put everything together to formulate the current project in relation to our overall observations and reflections upon what might be our right role in contributing to the field.
Sonya Pritzker, Ph.D. is a white/able-bodied, cis/queer, Jewish female with training in both anthropology and Chinese medicine. She has lived most of her life in different locations throughout California as well as in Beijing, China. She now lives in Tuscaloosa, AL, where she is a professor in the UA Department of Anthropology. Her research focuses on language and embodiment across a range of sites.
Baili Gall, M.A. is a white, able-bodied, cis/het female originally from Indianapolis, Indiana. She has been residing in Tuscaloosa, Alabama for the past four years, where she is currently Ph.D. student in the UA Department of Anthropology under the supervision of Dr’s Sonya Pritzker and Jason DeCaro. She also has training in Public Health and ESJ. Her research focuses on ideologies of care and food justice among children in the foster care system.
All collaborators will also be consulted and offered an opportunity to review any of the products emerging from their contributions prior to their being shared.
Initial Interview
Time Capsule
Empatica/Physiological Monitoring Questions
- What is the purpose of this project & what does “living justice” mean exactly?
- Do I have to be formally working in the fields of either social justice or somatics/embodiment to participate?
- How will the material that is collected in this project be retained and used and/or analyzed?
Analysis will be ongoing, both during and after all in-person interviews and each Time Capsule. It will be organized into categories in multiple ways, including the hashtags added to particular entries by collaborators as well as in NVIVO, the data analysis software that we use at ECHO. Categories or “themes” will also be identified through emergent and grounded coding processes. There is ultimately no limit to the themes that will emerge. Some likely preliminary themes, however, include hope, temporality, relationality, and lived experiences of in/justice, just to name a few.
- On what basis was this project developed?
Living Justice therefore adopts an in-depth ethnographic approach that investigates the ways in which interaction, memory, and unspoken relational experience is associated with physiology on a day-to-day basis. The project is also grounded in both person-centered ethnography, which seeks to understand culture through deep-dives into individual lived experience as well as microphenomenology, a method that draws upon in-depth reflective conversations to understand the full embodied dynamics of particular moments and encounters. You can read more about microphenomenology here.
Living Justice is also based upon Dr. Pritzker’s previous research on language and embodiment in the practice of Chinese medicine (Pritzker 2012); the practice of family constellation and inner child therapies as “technologies of the social” in Beijing, China (Pritzker & Duncan 2019; relational co-embodiment among couples in the Southeastern U.S.; and embodiment, intimacy, and temporality in everyday interaction (Pritzker & Perrino 2020, Pritzker 2020). (if you are interested in reviewing any of these references, they are available here)
Living Justice is also specifically based upon an extensive first phase of research, which began in 2020 and extended through 2021. In addition to interviews, we read and listened a lot. We participated in the full ESJ Certificate Program, for example, after which we put everything together to formulate the current project in relation to our overall observations and reflections upon what might be our right role in contributing to the field.
- Who are the researchers involved and what are their social locations?
Sonya Pritzker, Ph.D. is a white/able-bodied, cis/queer, Jewish female with training in both anthropology and Chinese medicine. She has lived most of her life in different locations throughout California as well as in Beijing, China. She now lives in Tuscaloosa, AL, where she is a professor in the UA Department of Anthropology. Her research focuses on language and embodiment across a range of sites.
Baili Gall, M.A. is a white, able-bodied, cis/het female originally from Indianapolis, Indiana. She has been residing in Tuscaloosa, Alabama for the past four years, where she is currently Ph.D. student in the UA Department of Anthropology under the supervision of Dr’s Sonya Pritzker and Jason DeCaro. She also has training in Public Health and ESJ. Her research focuses on ideologies of care and food justice among children in the foster care system.
- What are the likely products to emerge from this project?
- One or more experiential museum exhibits, performances, or small conferences
- An immersive book that includes both photography and text
- Short (or longer!) films that can be used in teaching or shown publicly
- Other pedagogical materials such as slide decks and shareable documents
- Academic articles and books (journal articles, special issues, monographs, and/or edited volumes)
All collaborators will also be consulted and offered an opportunity to review any of the products emerging from their contributions prior to their being shared.
- Do I have to participate as myself or can I contribute anonymously?
- What if there are certain things I would like to contribute anonymously and others I would like to contribute as a named collaborator?
- What is expected of me if I agree to be a collaborator on publications?
- How will I be compensated if I choose to participate?
- How do I sign up if I want to participate?
- How do I contact you if I decide to withdraw from the study while it is ongoing?
Initial Interview
- What will the initial interview questions ask about
- Do I have to answer all of the questions?
- Where will the initial interviews take place?
- How long will the initial visit be?
- Will interviews be recorded?
- What if I say something that I would like removed from the record?
Time Capsule
- What is the Time Capsule method?
- What exactly does the Time Capsule involve?
- When is the best time to schedule participation in the Time Capsule?
- Why is the Time Capsule 3-5 days?
- How exactly does EthOS work?
- Will I be pinged to answer any of the Time Capsule questions?
- Do I have to use the EthOS app during the Time Capsule?
- Is there any flexibility in terms of engaging in the Time Capsule prompts?
- What if some of the prompts/tasks in the Time Capsule don’t apply to me?
Empatica/Physiological Monitoring Questions
- Why does this study include physiological monitoring?
- What does the Empatica E4 measure?
- Is the E4 safe? Comfortable? Waterproof?
- If I choose to wear the E4, how will you get it to me and how will I return it?
- If I choose to wear the E4, do I have to wear it all the time during the interview and/or Time Capsule?