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. 

1. 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.

 

1. 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). 

1. 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

• What is the purpose of this project & what does “living justice” mean exactly?

This collaborative project is geared, towards developing both artistic and academic materials that can be used to demonstrate and teach what living justice looks, feels, and sounds like in everyday life. “Living justice” adopts an understanding of embodied social justice that includes participation in the collective project of embodying different relational patterns in ways that seek to transform historical and ongoing relational, physiological, or behavioral patterns of injustice in individual and/or social bodies. “Living justice” thus spans from the co-creation of positive justice in particular encounters as well as the navigation and vulnerability to a range of experiences of structural, relational injustice in our everyday lives.

• Do I have to be formally working in the fields of either social justice or somatics/embodiment to participate?

No! If you are engaged with embodied social justice as a student or in any other capacity, your collaboration is welcome.

• How will the material that is collected in this project be retained and used and/or analyzed? 

All material that is collected, including any recordings of interviews and all Time Capsule material, will be stored in a protected digital account approved by the University of Alabama human ethics board. Individual collaborators will also be given a digital file of all of their own material upon their completion of or withdrawal from the Time Capsule.
 
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?

This project is funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER award, a funding mechanism that supports original research as well as educational projects. The award was offered to me in August 2020 with the overarching purpose of developing research and pedagogy at the intersection of biocultural-medical and linguistic anthropology. Biolinguistic anthropology is based, specifically, on linguistic anthropology’s commitment to studying the ongoing emergence of culture in everyday interaction as well as biocultural-medical anthropology’s approach to understanding the cultural, historical, and relational emergence of biology. Biolinguistic anthropology thus focuses on the development of research that appreciates the multiple ways in which communication (including language but also gesture, gaze, body positioning, etc.) is always simultaneously biological, emotional, relational, and sociohistorically situated. 
 
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?

Living Justice is a team-based, collaborative project that includes a range of researchers who occupy different social locations in terms of race, class, ability, and gender identity/sexuality. The two primary researchers involved with Living Justice, are Sonya Pritzker and Baili Gall, both of whom have engaged in several years of training and preliminary research in ESJ, and orient daily to reflections upon their right role in directing the research and contributing to the field of ESJ more broadly.
 
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?

This is not predetermined. It is ultimately up to collaborators to co-create all the possible products. We see lots of exciting possibilities, however, including (just to name a few):

• 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?

All collaborators will be able to choose between being named or participating anonymously. If anonymous, participation will correspond to standard research ethics for working with human subjects, and all information will remain confidential (e.g., names changed and identifying variables disguised).  

• What if there are certain things I would like to contribute anonymously and others I would like to contribute as a named collaborator?

That’s totally workable. We’ll navigate that carefully together!

• What is expected of me if I agree to be a collaborator on publications? 

Nothing is expected per se: this is an open, optional invitation. Importantly, you own all of your own material. Regardless of team/ECHO publications or productions, you can do anything you would like with it, including using it in your teaching, writing, or working with us to write something or produce something. If you are interested in becoming a full collaborator in terms of having access to all participant data, however, we’ll work with you to make you a formal co-investigator in the UA human research ethics system.

• How will I be compensated if I choose to participate?

All collaborators will be sent a $50 E-gift card upon completion of the interview, and an additional $100 after completion of the Time Capsule and exit survey. This will be emailed from the University of Alabama. It may take up to 7 (seven) days to receive your gift card. If you do not receive it, you can reach out directly to Dr. Pritzker at sepritzker@ua.edu.  If you withdraw early from the project, for any reason, you will be compensated on a pro-rated basis.

• How do I sign up if I want to participate?

If you are interested in participating, you can schedule the initial remote interview here. When you sign up, you can also indicate your interest in participating in the Time Capsule and Physiological Measurement components of the project.

• How do I contact you if I decide to withdraw from the study while it is ongoing?

If you want to withdraw from the study while it is ongoing, you can always contact Dr. Pritzker at sepritzker@ua.edu or Baili Gall at bjgall@crimson.ua.edu. Detailed contact information will also be included on both the consent form and the Time Capsule guide.
 
 
Initial Interview

• What will the initial interview questions ask about

​​The individual interview consists of open-ended questions about your background; your 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. Depending on your comfort and availability, however, the conversations may also include deep dives into your embodied experience withmicrophenomenology. While we will not be doing standalone MP interviews, at multiple junctions the project invites participant-collaborators to reflect more deeply on particular, chosen moments, both on your own and in conversation with us.

• Do I have to answer all of the questions?

No. All questions are optional.

• Where will the initial interviews take place?

All initial interviews will be scheduled remotely, and will take place on Zoom. If it is possible to conduct interviews in person, they will take place at a location of your choice. 

• How long will the initial visit be?

We anticipate that the interviews will take 60 minutes each, depending on how much you want to talk. The initial conversation also includes a consent process, however, so overall it should take about 90 minutes to 2 hours.

• Will interviews be recorded?

Interviews will be both audio and video-recorded according to your comfort.

• What if I say something that I would like removed from the record?

If you say something or do something you would like removed from the record, just let us know and it will be deleted.
 
Time Capsule

• What is the Time Capsule method?

The Time Capsule method is a democratic, participant-driven, and minimally interruptive technique for gathering information from multiple contributors over the same period of time. It has been amply utilized in the making of many influential documentary films such as Life in a Day. Though standard Time Capsule methodology involves multiple participants contributing video recordings during the same time, the Living Justice Time Capsule is being conducted on a rolling basis over the course of the next year. This is being done in order to accommodate participation based on collaborators’ availability as well as researchers’ ability to engage deeply with each collaborator.

• What exactly does the Time Capsule involve?

The Living Justice Time Capsule involves 3-5 days of reflective journaling using an intuitive app called EthOS, which allows you to enter photographs, videos, audio-recordings, and/or text responses to a series of prompts as well as open-ended submissions. Specifically, the Time Capsule asks collaborators to enter 2x/daily reflections in response to four open-ended prompts about your embodied experience and their work to embody justice in the world. It also includes three specific projects (Your Home, Your Neighborhood, and Your Work-Space), each of which includes include prompts or “tasks” that can be answered one or more times at any time during the Time Capsule. 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).  

• When is the best time to schedule participation in the Time Capsule?

The Time Capsule can be done individually and scheduled according to collaborator comfort and availability. We are deeply committed to supporting the agency and choice of each collaborator and would not want participation in Living Justice to interrupt the important work you are doing in the world. The Time Capsule can therefore be done during a period of high activity when you are deeply involved in movement work. Because we are interested in the everyday “mundane” ways in which practitioners engaged with ESJ, however, it can also be done during a slower period in which you are not intensely focused on movement work. Beginning September 1, 2022, it can also 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. The addition of 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). 

• Why is the Time Capsule 3-5 days?

The Time Capsule in 3-5 days because it allows us to track your physiological responses (if you choose to wear the E4) on a regular basis for an extended period of time. It also allows you some flexibility in responding to the 2x/daily reflections as well as the individual projects.

• How exactly does EthOS work?

EthoS is an app that can be downloaded from the app store on either Apple or Android, and you will be invited to the overall Living Justice project via email. All collaborators will receive a detailed guide on how to use the app during the Time Capsule. Briefly, however, once you log in to EthOS and adjust the EthOS settings on your phone, you will see the homepage. This includes several “projects”: Daily Reflections, Your Home, Your Neighborhood, Your Work-Space(s), and Consent. Tapping on each project will open a page with an overall description. At the bottom of the screen, you can tap on “tasks” to view or respond to a series of prompts that can be answered once or multiple times any time during the Time Capsule using video, audio, text, or photo.

• Will I be pinged to answer any of the Time Capsule questions?

No. We’ve set the Time Capsule up so that it will not interrupt you at any time. If you would like regular reminders from us, however, let us know. For the twice daily reflections, we find that setting regular alarms on your phone is helpful. This way, you are able to choose the sounds and/or vibrations that feel best for you.

• Do I have to use the EthOS app during the Time Capsule?

Not necessarily. If you would prefer to journal on paper or create a photo diary in some other way, let’s talk about how that will work!

• Is there any flexibility in terms of engaging in the Time Capsule prompts?

Absolutely. Although we would like to have as many folks participating on the same timeline, we understand the need for flexibility. We will work this out with you individually.

• What if some of the prompts/tasks in the Time Capsule don’t apply to me?

Not a problem! All tasks and questions are optional.
 
 
Empatica/Physiological Monitoring Questions

• Why does this study include physiological monitoring?

We are including optional physio as part of this study 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. The combination of time-matched data relates the goals of biolinguistic anthropology as detailed further here. 

• What does the Empatica E4 measure?

The E4 measures changes in 

• Is the E4 safe? Comfortable? Waterproof?

The E4 is safe and relatively comfortable. It is minimally water resistant but not waterproof.

• If I choose to wear the E4, how will you get it to me and how will I return it?

If you choose to wear the E4, we will reach out to you and get your address so we can send you the device. When we send it, we will include a pre-paid return shipping label and box for you to return it to us. 

• If I choose to wear the E4, do I have to wear it all the time during the interview and/or Time Capsule?

No. It records up to 60 hours. The invitation is to wear it during the day only.