Micropolitics and Collective Liberation: Mind/Body Practice and Left Social Movements

Mindfulness at work: A critical re-view

“…This critical approach to the intertwining of the personal and the political is embedded within existing programmes and practices that challenge inequalities of power, systems of domination and sources of repression. The Mindfulness Allies Project has introduced mindfulness into low-income groups and communities, the Lineage and Alternatives to Incarceration Projects into prisons and among youth, the Strategy-Organisation-Leadership (SOL) initiative into unions, the Mindful Justice Initiative into the legal system, and Mindful Anti-Oppression Pedagogy into higher education (Barrett, 2017; Berila, 2016; Blum, 2014; Krause, 2018; Reveley, 2015; Rowe, 2016). Much as MBSR programmes are praised by supporters of workplace spirituality for their role in translating pragmatic interests in ‘stress relief’ into existential concerns with human ‘suffering’ (dukkha), critical mindfulness programmes are celebrated for intertwining the concern with ‘existential’ suffering into removing ‘surplus repression’.…”

Prickles and goo: Human rights and spirituality

“…Author and news anchor Van Jones has welcomed a "convergence between spiritual people becoming more active and activist people becoming more spiritual" (Simon 2018). Rowe (2016) has observed a growing number of organizations working at "the fold between subjective and social change." Even so, the intersection of spirituality and change-making remains an obscure (if not taboo) topic within both mainstream academic and conventional human rights circles.…”

“…In saying that activists should pay attention to the connections between inner and outer dimensions of social change, I do not mean to suggest one must suddenly repress a natural indignation at widespread injustice or ignore the ways in which it can help to incite action. At the same time, given the role that spiritual practices such as meditation can play in reducing automaticity of response and regression to default habits and pathways, they may, with time, help to cultivate more flexible thinking, opening us up to more creative work and changing the longer-term nature of the way we frame problems and conceptualize responses (Rowe 2016).…”

“…With a view to fostering a better balance between the prickles and the goo of human rights, this article will explore what a more spiritual grounding for human rights might look like and how it might change both perspectives and practices from the comparatively conventional and mainstream. Although the international human rights literature has been largely silent on the topic of spirituality, there are veins to mine within the social work and broader social justice literatures in which concepts of "spiritual activism" (Keating 2008), "mystic activism" (DeYoung 2007), "engaged spirituality" (Falk 2003), and "transformative social change" (Rowe 2016) have been explored.…”

The Inner Life of Democracy: Learning in Deliberation between the Police and Communities of Color

“…Hence attention may focus on how best to cultivate the ethical orientation of activists in order to make activism sustainable while no political importance is accorded to developing the inner lives of those who are not involved in collective struggle. 37 This wariness is revealing: inner life matters, but only for those who are engaged in what is regarded as already significant political action, and then as an instrumental way to improve that action. But if it is only the inner lives of activists that matter, this suggests that only social movement activists protesting structural inequality are politically significant.…”