Living Toward Justice - by Sonya E Pritzker

Book Synopsis

An illustrated exploration of how practitioners and scholars in the field of embodied social justice (ESJ) seek to incorporate justice in everyday life

Living Toward Justice: A Time Capsule documents three collaborative time capsules in 2022, when fifty-four practitioners of embodied social justice came together to respond to a series of prompts and activities centered around the question: "What does it look, feel, and sound like to live (toward) justice in your life?" Through photographs, video and audio recordings, and text-based reflections, they offer readers a vivid and immersive experience of embodying justice during a unique moment in history.

The diverse embodied social justice community engages in a vibrant dialogue of the ways in which practices such as yoga, ecstatic dance, somatic psychotherapy, meditation, martial arts, and more are often characterized by cultural appropriation, lack of diversity, and lack of social analysis.

Review Quotes

"Living Toward Justice is a powerful and inspiring testament to what it means to weave embodied social justice into the fabric of daily life. With insight, compassion, and vulnerability, Pritzker and her collaborators show us how our bodies are both a site of injustice and the ground for our liberation. A must-read for anyone committed to building a more just, connected, and hopeful world."--Rae Johnson, PhD, author, Embodied Social Justice and Embodied Activism

"A treasure of inspiring words, images, insights, and reflections for how we can co-create social justice in these challenging times. The creativity and community of this project both models how we can live our values to build a better world. As I read, I grew more hopeful and felt more connected. This book will be a helpful resource in courses, programs, and in our own lives."--Beth Berila, ACC, transformational coach and facilitator; Director, Gender and Women's Studies Program, St. Cloud State University

"This is not a book--it is an experience, an interactive exhibit, an experimental time capsule that has somehow translated living ideas and encounters around presence, purpose, possibility, practice and partnership such that the reading itself occurs in deeply embodied ways. It complicates what we thought we knew about 'social justice' and 'embodiment, ' stripping them of singular definitions and linear thought about oppression and liberation to ground them in collective experiences of the body, heart, mind, and spirit. . . . a contribution across diverse fields that is unlike anything I've ever read."--Tessa Hicks Peterson, Professor and Assistant Vice President of Community Engagement, Pitzer College; author, Liberating the Classroom; co-editor, Practicing Liberation

"This moving book poetically chronicles how the field of embodied social justice (ESJ) is taking shape. It beautifully refuses a singular definition of the term ESJ in the same moment that it commits to detailing how and why it must be reconciled as a definitive field of theory and praxis."--Kesha Fikes, PhD, anthropologist and somatic therapist; Professor in Somatic Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies; creator of the psycho-political praxis called Somatic Extimacy

About the Author

Sonya E. Pritzker, Associate Professor, University of Alabama, Department of Anthropology, is a linguistic and medical anthropologist, as well as a licensed practitioner of Chinese medicine. Her work focuses on the intersection of language and embodied experience in relation to culturally situated ideologies of race, class, gender, health, and selfhood. Integrating theories and methods from linguistic, psychological, and biocultural medical anthropology, her research emphasizes collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to advance understanding of human emotion, intimacy, and physical and mental wellbeing. She is a leader in embodied social justice.