Intertwined social injustices
Every day we wake up to a world where different forms of social injustice are interwoven. Some pertain to gender, racial, sexual, or class inequalities. Others are related to the unfair distribution of material and immaterial resources, or the consequences of the climate crisis. To make things worse, not all manifestations of injustice are easy to spot or explain, which is why – albeit unwillingly – we sometimes end up exacerbating them as we go through life.
Take a simple example. Whilst impacting the entire world population, the COVID-19 pandemic affected people differently depending on previously underlying conditions (their income, their demographics, their geographical location), and access to vaccination. For instance, those of us in low-paid and essential service jobs were forced to carry on working onsite, and were disproportionately exposed to the virus. And if during the health emergency many praised the indefatigable work of nurses and doctors, fewer remembered the contributions of postmen, cleaners, or the shopping delivery fleet, who often came from non-White and financially vulnerable backgrounds. On the other hand, as billions got locked into their homes, other forms of inequity emerged. All over the world, women who worked remotely took on the lion’s share of childcare and domestic tasks. Survivors of intimate-partner violence and “not-yet-out” LGBTQ+ youth found themselves confined with their perpetrators or unsupportive family members. Not to mention the millions of children and youngsters from neighbourhoods that lacked Internet access, who were denied the right to continue their education by attending classes online.
Alternatively, just consider the war in Ukraine. Besides the horrifying number of casualties, the conflict is dramatically affecting energy prices, as well as the exportation of fertilisers into the Middle East, where the agricultural sector must already contend with the effects of global warming. Needless to say, both phenomena are expected to produce disproportionate effects on lower-income classes, and, among them, on hundreds of thousands of women, Black, Brown and minority people in particular.
We could, of course, carry on listing examples of the interconnectedness of different forms of inequality and oppression. And they would all point to the same painful evidence: it makes little sense to tackle one single type of injustice individually. Instead, we must try to address them all simultaneously, and to do so it is helpful to step out of the picture, to gain a bird’s-eye view of the complex links between various factors, and to look for tools able to showcase numerous standpoints at once.
So this is the challenge that we are taking on in this collective work, which brings together activists, experts, writers, educators, researchers, and artists from multiple walks of life, all sharing an interest in the interconnections between several types of injustice. Our goal is to first, present you with instruments that might help you develop a more holistic, multi-layered perspective on social injustice. And second, to share a few possible responses to the intersecting ways in which social injustice manifests.
Why a “Cookbook”, and how it works
When we started this project, we wondered about the best way to examine and reverse complex systems of injustices without reducing them to a series of linear narratives. We also wanted to offer some examples of positive actions that each and every of us could draw inspiration from, and adapt to different contexts and situations.
Inspired by chefs and food enthusiasts as well as the “hacker movement”, we have thus chosen to collate our ideas, experiences and inputs into a “cookbook”: a genre that we feel is plural, open-ended and practically minded.
Think, in fact, of a classic cookbook: one of those you might have at home, or that have become popular over the last few years across tech communities. On the one hand, they all provide information and suggestions on various “ingredients” and their possible uses. On the other hand, none of them exhaust all the possible combinations in which these ingredients can be mixed, thus leaving space for alternative, creative “recipes”.
Similarly, our own Cookbook for Social, Gender and Environmental Justice intends to show how different “ingredients” (ideas, values and approaches surrounding justice and injustice) can be combined, generating “recipes” aimed at promoting novel and empowering practices.
With this in mind, every “recipe” within this Cookbook includes three main sections: a list of “ingredients” (theoretical definitions, concepts, ethical requirements, tools or other relevant ideas), plus a “preparation” or “cooking method” (which illustrates how such “ingredients” can be mixed in practice). Wherever appropriate, some extra tips to make the recipe “more spicy” are also included.
A very important thing to remember is that our “recipes” only showcase some of the possible ways of “combining ingredients” and of “using theory in practice”. In other words, each “recipe” has been interpreted and approached by one of our contributors depending on their background and context (hence the many differences in styles and recommendations you will find across the cookbook). None of them, however, is meant as a set of prescriptive instructions. Rather, the idea is for readers to pick, choose and adapt propositions and insights which might fit their own experiences of intersecting injustices.
Still confused..? Just imagine you were designing a website for the very first time. You might want to know how the various basic elements (header, footer, sidebars, etc.) can be coded, and see how they are used in practical examples. But, at some point, you will start sketching and creating your own site, catalysing all the ideas and inspiration you have collected towards your own, unique creation.
Another way of explaining this is by saying that we have done our very best to make the form of this text part of its content. In other words, the Cookbook format itself is designed to help you think of the intricate structures of injustice we are all enmeshed in in a plural, intersecting way.
We hope you will find this approach useful and intriguing, and that you’ll enjoy going through our contributors’ stories, tips, and examples.
A few caveats and limitations
In the spirit of plurality, we have made sure that our contributors and their “recipes” reflected the modus operandi of different fields (academia, policy, literature and the arts, journalism, advocacy, activism, social enterprises). This is meant to facilitate reading from different audiences, as well as to create bridges between various sectors, bringing “academia on the street” and taking “art practices into the world of policy think tanks”.
This process, however, has brought to light at least two limitations of this project. Firstly, the limits stemming from our own extended network, which mostly includes people based in Italy, the UK, France, the USA, South Africa, Germany, and India. Specifically,
the production of this Cookbook has been funded by the Italian Cultural Institute in London, and was initiated by a collective of Italian and UK-based people, which has later grown to involve individuals and groups from different countries and continents.
We have worked hard to decentralise our points of view and crosspollinate different intellectual and political perspectives, and since the project has been conceived as the mere starting point of a longer-term effort, we hope it will soon grow to host more diverse contributions from around the world. Still, we are aware that the “recipes” we are currently presenting reflect the worlds and gazes of our contributors, which, while multifaceted enough, in no way can yet be called “systemic” or “global”.
Secondly, we are conscious of one significant linguistic constraint. Although we are firm believers in the necessity to decentralise and decolonise minds, communications and actions, for the purpose of this project we have deemed it necessary to write in English, a language that might favour a wider circulation of knowledge and practices. This is an important limitation, since language itself notably affects the expression of our experiences. One simple example? A very gendered language, such as Italian or French, may deprive non-binary and other queer people of suitable expressions to make sense of their identities. On the other hand, colonial languages such as English or Spanish have historically limited the self-expression of colonised populations. This is why, in the future, we hope that new versions of this Cookbook might welcome multi-lingual contributions.
That said, reflecting on the limits of this project has turned into a thought-provoking exercise – an attempt at the same “theory in practice” method we have tried to follow in this book, and which has to do with acknowledging the partiality of our views and acting to change them accordingly. We are also extremely grateful to the many people and organisations we’ve through time allied with and by whom we’ve been enriched, who have contributed to at least partially correct these pitfalls and to add new layers to this work (whose limitations remain, of course, ours and ours only).
Altogether, upon publication of this text, our pledge is to continue to engage in conversations, to call in new contributions and new contributors, and to actively seek collaborations and opportunities to foster social justice in all of its forms.
Happy reading, and feel free to reach out if that sounds appealing.
A brief note on the “recipes” and “ingredients” listed in this Cookbook
- Just like most cookbooks will include starters, mains, side dishes and desserts, our own “recipes” are also divided into four categories: Understand/Learn, Speak/Write, Teach/Mobilise, and Change/Decide, which do exactly what it’s said on the tin.
- You will find that some of these categories also intersect with each other: for instance, a “recipe” designed to help people speak more accurately about interconnected injustices may also include elements meant to understand the topic better. Once again, it is up to you to mix and match as you please. After all, don’t the best chefs mix up dishes components all the time..?
- Whilst every “recipe” in this Cookbook comes with its own “ingredients”, we thought it may be helpful to list here a few basic concepts and approaches which underline this entire volume. Think of them as the staples you might have in your cupboard (salt, pepper, oil, soy sauce, herbs and spices..), and which you can use as a basis in any of your culinary experiments.
1- A desire for (and an understanding of) different forms of social justice, including:
Gender justice: aimed at ending the inequalities between women and men and queer and non-queer people, based on their sex, gender, and sexual identities. These currently manifest within the family, the economy, politics, culture, as well as various forms of violence and other aspects of private and public life.
Racial justice: involving putting an end to disparities and discriminations based on people’s race, ethnicity, and, often, their intersections with geography, language, religion and other identity traits. These also currently manifest in all areas of social life.
Socio-economic justice: applying to the eradication of inequities in the distribution of resources including wealth, primary goods, opportunities, entitlements such as access to health, wellbeing, or education.
Ecological justice: this entails addressing the unbalanced exposures of specific, marginalised people and communities to the harms causes by climate change, the planet’s resource extraction and other environmental trends.
Intergenerational justice: this includes fairness between generations (children, youth, adults, the elderly) as well as between the present and future human population. It is tightly connected to both socio-economic and ecological justice, and particularly to undermining the impact of the climate crisis on future generations.
Disability justice: based on the elimination of material and immaterial forms of discrimination of physically and mentally disabled people, which are expected to be felt particularly intensely depending on differences in race, gender, class and sexuality.
2- An interest in approaches focusing on the interconnections between all or some of the above, including:
Intersectionality: a framework capturing the different modes of privilege and marginalisation stemming from the different aspects of a person’s identity (race, gender, sexuality, ability/disability, class, physical appearance etc.).
Co-liberation or collective liberation: emerging perspective based on the recognition that social and ecological justice struggles are intimately connected, which translates into various collective forms of organising.
Decolonisation (of knowledge, language, practices..): sets of approaches seeking to build or recover systems of knowledge, modes of communication, and types of action alternative to historically West-, white and male-centred perspectives.