Just Relationships

Living Out Social Justice as Mentor, Family, Friend, and Lover

Douglas L. Kelley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315452234
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Sozialpsychologie

Bringing a social justice lens to daily interpersonal relationships, Just Relationships offers a perspective on existing social science theory that demonstrates how our personal relationships should be grounded in fairness and justice. Douglas Kelley utilizes concepts from a variety of academic disciplines and helping professions to examine the barriers encountered in achieving balanced partnerships. This student-friendly book brings the important new perspective of social justice to courses focusing on interpersonal relationships and family relationships, supplementing traditional textbooks. This book presents key relationship theories in each chapter and then applies them from a social justice perspective; uses thought-provoking case studies and guiding questions to enhance student learning; examines a number of different types of interpersonal relationships including family, friends, lovers, and mentor-mentee relationships within a variety of socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts.

Part I
Imagining Just Relationships

Perspectives

1
Just Thoughts

Most people sense whether their relationships are fair or not. “Do I put in more effort?” “Do I always initiate?” “Have I been hurt more deeply?” “Am I respected?” “Do I have equal opportunities to grow as a person? To do what I like? To be happy? To just be me?!”

Relationships are moral entities (Austin & Tobiasen, 1982; Kelley, 2012b; Waldron & Kelley, 2008). People view many relational behaviors and events from a moral framework. That is, they often interpret actions within relationships as right or wrong, good or bad. Relationship partners have a seemingly innate sense as to fairness or appropriateness in their relationships. Individuals, especially in Western cultures, also gauge whether their relationship partners are restricting them from growth or personal expression. In these ways, social relationships are evaluated in terms of whether they are just relationships, especially when things seem out of balance (“I’m pulling all the weight in this relationship,” “How could you do that to me?” “Wait a minute, I have a say in this, too!”).

Social justice has been a term predominately used to discuss disadvantaged persons. Disadvantaged typically refers to a lack of equality between groups or individuals. For example, equity disparity between the sexes or between racial or cultural groups has been a much studied and referenced social justice issue (Frey, 2009). Inevitably, social justice inequities are rooted in power disadvantages—typically, one group, compared to the other, has more of a sense of self-efficacy. That is, they have greater opportunity to influence their own lives.

Self-efficacy, the ability to influence one’s own life (Bandura, 1997), results from access to resources (e.g., finances, status, skill sets, and even nurturing), knowledge and ability to execute certain social behaviors (e.g., argumentation), and the ability to achieve desired goals (e.g., a proven track record of achievement, and availability of opportunities). Unequal distribution of these elements between groups or individuals may be viewed as unjust, unfair, and, often, as morally wrong. Injustice may also be evident when procedures to ‘right’ these ‘wrongs’ are not equally applied to all parties involved. For example, one of the functions of a judge is to ensure plaintiff and defendant adhere to the same protocol during courtroom proceedings. As such, social justice themes often focus on equity, equality, fairness, power imbalance, empowerment, identity, resources, and morality.

These themes are represented throughout research on interpersonal relationships, although common terminology often mitigates seeing interpersonal relationships in light of a moral or justice lens (e.g., terms such as extradyadic relationship and extradyadic sex are used by certain writers to remove the value-orientation of words such as infidelity and adultery; Allan & Harrison, 2009). Traditional social science–based theories that focus on equity, power, attachment, attribution, conflict, identity, and forgiveness and reconciliation are, essentially, embedded in what relational partners often see as moral, or value-laden, contexts. As such, these theories (e.g., equity theory, attribution theory) can be used to better understand partners’ responses to perceived inequity or transgression.

Certain researchers have specifically written about justice in interpersonal contexts (De Cremer, van Kleef, & Wubben, 2007; Lamm, 1986). My own writing on forgiveness (2012b) suggests that one reason people are motivated to forgive is to restore the moral order of the relationship. Other forgiveness researchers have focused on the justice gap (Exline, Worthington, Hill, & McCullough, 2003) or the perception of certain transgressions, such as infidelity, as moral wrongs (Kelley, 2012a).

The goal of Just Relationships is to examine interpersonal relationships through a social justice lens. Here I use existing social science theory in an effort to frame interpersonal relationships from a social justice perspective. A few early social psychology works focused on justice in interpersonal relationships (Bier-hoff, Cohen, & Greenberg, 1986; Greenberg & Cohen, 1982), as does a current research program by Mel Lerner and colleagues, who believe that “psychologists [all social scientists] can and should conduct research on issues of critical social significance” (Ross & Miller, 2002). Yet, focusing on interpersonal relationships as moral entities (e.g., relationship partners construct relationship ethics that guide the determination of “right” and “wrong” behavior) has not been a common perspective in social science research. Recently, during a meeting with a local, practicing psychologist, I mentioned that I was working on a proposal for a book that would look at interpersonal relationships using social justice language. Her eyes brightened. “That would be fascinating!” As nice as it was to hear, it concerned me that this person hadn’t taken time think about relationships from a justice, or moral, framework. Likewise, a few years ago, Vince Waldron and I hosted an event at our national conference, focusing on how morality emerges and is expressed in interpersonal relationships. Many of the scholars who participated, all of whom were nationally recognized researchers, expressed appreciation for being challenged to think about their own work in moral terms. Most of them had never made this conceptual move.

A Social Justice Framework for Interpersonal Relationships

There is a significant flow of thought to the chapters of this book. Let me take a moment to give you a brief framework to help you follow my thinking. Just Relationships is designed to look at aspects of relationships often overlooked by social scientists, but often most important to relational partners. For instance, in my research with couples married 30–80 years (Waldron & Kelley, 2008), many marriage partners talked about respect as the most important element of making their relationships last. Others highlighted the importance of balance, equality, fairness, and unselfishness (Kelley, 2015). These concepts represent moral aspects of these couples’ relationships. From their perspective, they are ways that you “should” be with one another. In addition, Just Relationships takes research, set in traditional social justice settings (e.g., see Chapter Seven: “Dehumanizing the ‘Other’”), and applies it to our personal relationships. With all of these elements in mind, the following chapters lay out key concepts to imagine and shape our personal relationships in a just manner.

Just Relationships begins with Part I: Imagining Just Relationships: Perspectives where together we explore conceptual foundations for the rest of the book. Here we look at the nature of justice, with a focus on justice as process. Then we move on to explore justice as part of the moral ethic each of us develops within each of our relationships, and emphasize dialogue as more than a means of negotiating morality, but also a means of experiencing morality itself. Importantly, justice and morality are seen as spaces in which individuals can experience their full humanity. Keeping this in mind, we venture into unexpected territory by exploring love as the most efficient means of achieving justice in long-term relationships. Not sentimental love, but love based on commitment, deep emotional bonds, and other-centeredness. Finally, advocacy is offered as a means of understanding love in action, and interpersonal advocacy is conceptualized as bringing hope through creating a space where if something good can happen, it will.

The four foundational chapters set a tone that is practical, but also somewhat idyllic. Thus, we have to ask, All of this sounds good, so why aren’t our relationships just? Part II: Barriers to Just Relationships: Perceptions That Separate examines four phenomena that help explain why we often fail to live justly. We begin by looking at how our worldviews, or relational frames as I call them, often restrict our ability to see others and understand their experience. This often leads to the creation of ingroup and outgroup experiences that culminate in dehumanization. So, our restricted relational frames and tendency to dehumanize those who are different from us work against treating others justly. In addition to dehumanizing others in our lives, we tend to get sidetracked from justice by protecting our own identity and public face. And, somewhat counterintuitively, we find that when we experience our own shame it often draws us away from others and undermines our ability to imagine and shape just relationships.

Assuming we can manage some of the barriers to living justly, how do we begin to shape relationships that are characterized by justice? Part III: Shaping Just Relationships: Creating a Just Future looks at four processes essential to redeeming our broken relationships and broken selves. We begin by looking at resilience, examining notions of risk, protective factors, and characteristics associated with the ability to positively adapt and change. This is followed by a focus on conflict practices, specifically looking at how to manage mindless behavior and high arousal in order to restore a balance of power to broken relationships. But, power balance is difficult to achieve without emotional healing through forgiveness, so we go there next—recognizing that apart from emotional healing, it is extremely difficult for relational partners to work through their differences in a humane manner. Finally, reconciliation. Here we examine the development, or reestablishment, of trust and commitment with appropriate boundaries, so that relational partners have a safe space to rebuild their relationship.

The final portion, Part IV: Just Musings, reflects on the process of writing this book, and reminds you of where we’ve been, and where we might be going. The closing poem, “I,” gives you something to ponder as you leaf back through the book reflecting on your own just journey.

A Personal Note

My experience has been that people who do not hold a healthy understanding of relationship justice stay stuck in never-ending loops of anger, hurt, frustration, and hopelessness. I have written this book to help us think more broadly and deeply about justice in our relationships and, as such, to help us all get unstuck from unproductive patterns that work against our connecting and respecting.

My counseling degree has taught me that most people only come for help when they feel stuck. My forgiveness research with couples has taught me that people need help working through, or living with, hurt—otherwise they stay stuck in cycles of extreme emotion and confused sense-making. My connection to inner-city organizations has taught me how people often stay stuck in the cycle of poverty if they don’t have someone to help them see hope in a new perspective. In each of these settings, a myopic view of justice (i.e., a limited view of what is fair or “right” in a relationship) can blind individuals as to how to move forward in their lives.

To this point, ten years ago I began teaching a course at Arizona State University entitled Inner-City Families. I di...