Below are brief descriptions of research projects being undertaken by three of our graduate students. Their work is supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Council (SSHRC) graduate fellowship.
“Racialized Online Discourse:
The Role of the Internet in Reproducing Racial Inequality”
Evan Bowness
My M.A. thesis project focuses on how racialized discourse—acts of communication that ascribe socially constructed racial characteristics to groups or group members—manifests and contributes to the maintenance of racial oppression and privilege in society.
Online forums are an important yet under-explored cultural space for the study of racialized discourse. In particular, incidents involving encounters between the police and members of racialized groups have been discussed online in ‘user-generated content’ forums where members of the public can freely voice their opinions. During the summer of 2008 five such incidents in Manitoba attained significant online presence: the apprehension by police of Robert Wilson, an African-Canadian rapper; the inquest into the shooting death of Matthew Dumas, a young Aboriginal man believed by police to be a robbery suspect; the Taser death of Michael Langan, a young Métis man suspected to be a car thief; the complaint filed by a young Aboriginal woman against RCMP officers who allegedly Tasered her repeatedly in a holding cell; and the police shooting death of Craig McDougall, a young Aboriginal man. These incidents generated thousands of online comments in discussion forums, blogs, social networking sites, and commentary sections following news articles. While the incidents provoked allegations of racial profiling, they also generated claims that denied the existence of racism in policing practices.
Using Critical Discourse Analysis to investigate the online responses to each of these five incidents, my research explores the ways in which the Internet acts as a site where power relations and inequality between racialized groups are established, strengthened, redefined, and challenged. Several key questions frame this analysis: What discourses dominate in the online discussions? How do these discourses act to distinguish racialized groups from one another? Is there evidence of counter or oppositional discourses that challenge the process of racial ‘othering’?
How Does Restorative Justice Operate as a Gendering Strategy?
Amanda Nelund
My Master’s thesis involved a case study of the consultation process by which women’s organizations and the provincial government came together in Nova Scotia to discuss the use of restorative justice (RJ) in cases of sexual violence and partner violence, using governmentality theory to situate women’s organizations in neoliberal conditions of governance. My Ph.D. project will apply these same tools—restorative justice, governmentality and feminist theory—to meet a different objective and address a different question.
Feminist scholars have a rich history of studying law and legal institutions. One body of work involves a discursive analysis of the law as a gendering strategy—law does not simply act upon pre-gendered subjects but rather actively constructs gendered subjects. Though this work has contributed much to our understanding of formal law it has largely ignored informal legal processes. Other feminists, however, have engaged with a practical examination of informal justice, most currently with restorative justice. Feminists interested in RJ have focused mainly on its potential dangers and benefits in cases of domestic violence. While some have raised concerns over victim safety and the potential trivialization of the problem of domestic violence, others argue that RJ can be empowering for victims. None of these researchers, however, have engaged in more discursive analysis of restorative justice processes.
Governmentality scholars, on the other hand, have undertaken discursive analyses of RJ, focusing on both the external, governmental power exerted by authorities and internal, self-governing techniques as well as their interaction. These scholars contend that RJ has been utilized as a mode of neoliberal governance that allows the state to scale back its direct provision of justice. Much of this work focuses on how RJ creates ‘responsiblized’ individuals, but there is no mention of whether this process is gendered.
My project therefore seeks to incorporate insights from both these streams of thought as a way to broaden and deepen the debate around the use of restorative justice and domestic violence. I ask: How does restorative justice operate as a gendering strategy?
In Winnipeg the John Howard Society sponsors and the Manitoba Department of Justice funds a restorative justice program for adults entitled Restorative Resolutions. This program involves adult offenders convicted of a crime for which they may face at least six months of jail time. Each offender is assigned a case worker and together they develop a community based plan. These case plans will serve as the main data source for my project. I will conduct a discourse analysis of the case plans, looking specifically for ways in which the gender of the offender is constructed by the text. Along with the case plan offenders often meet with their victims in a RJ session. Observing and recording restorative justice sessions (involving both men and women offenders) will allow me to analyze these sessions for gendered discourses and gendered subject construction. At a minimum this study will be comprised of 30 case plans and 10 RJ sessions. In order to answer the research question my research objectives are as follows: (a) to determine gender differences in the number of offenders involved in restorative justice and in the type of crime committed in these cases; (b) discursively analyze case plans and RJ sessions for the creation of gendered subjects both between men and women and among men and women; (c) compare these subjects to those analyzed by feminists in the formal legal realm; (d) assess the degree to which the gendered subjects are responsiblized and how much this process is related to the principles and practices of RJ.
Practically, this research will contribute to the work of RJ practitioners by documenting differing treatment in RJ sessions and case plans. The research will contribute to the governmentality literature by adding gender as a variable and gendering as a governing strategy. My research will also extend feminist engagement with RJ into a new area and may assist the debate about its use in domestic violence cases by showing how gender is constructed in RJ sessions.
“An Evaluation of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
in Light of Restorative Justice Principles”
Konstantin Petoukhov
My undergraduate research offered a comparative analysis of the powers of justice self-determination of Aboriginal peoples in Canada and the United States. For my Master’s thesis, I am continuing my research on Aboriginal justice issues, shifting my focus to the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and restorative justice in Canada. My goal is to examine the “restorativeness” of the TRC as a means to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of this justice philosophy when dealing with historical injustice like the residential schooling experience.
Many Aboriginal children who were sent to Indian Residential Schools suffered abuse, including psychological, physical, emotional, and sexual forms. No single process can hope to heal en masse and at once these harms; however, both restorative justice and TRCs claim they can set participants on a path toward healing. As such, my main research question is: To what extent is the Indian Residential Schools TRC being designed in accordance with values and practices of restorative justice? More specifically, I ask: 1. Does restorative justice provide a flexible and satisfactory means for blending culturally plural justice approaches? 2. Are the justice principles guiding the TRC consistent with the cultural values and traditions of the variety of Canadian Aboriginal peoples? and 3. In what ways does the planned TRC continue to reinforce European legal traditions, as well as favour government-defined goals of nation-building and conflict cessation? By addressing these questions, it will become possible to examine the overlap between the principles of restorative justice and the TRC practices.
Drawing upon secondary data sources (academic publications, newspapers, government documents, documents of the TRC, and statements and position papers from Aboriginal leaders and residential school survivors) as well as 8 to 10 qualitative interviews with TRC practitioners to uncover their subjective experiences, opinions, and perspectives with regards to the restorative practices of the TRC, this research can shed light on the ability of the Canadian TRC to address the needs of IRS survivors, which include restoration and healing of individuals and their communities, as well as renewing and revitalizing the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and Canadian government. In a broader sense, it will become possible to contribute further to the existing knowledge on the TRCs and their connection to the principles of restorative justice.