It is of course a well-known principle in Catholic social thought that the dignity of the human person ought to be respected and defended in all arenas of human life. The basic principle that all persons “possess a God-given dignity” is thus a morally consequential claim, one that demands social, economic, and political action. But how should we understand this demand for action, especially for the person “on the street,” so to speak? What kinds of actions are required to promote human dignity and, thus, justice for all? I am primarily interested in how centering a particular account of nonviolent social change in the adjudication of this question—namely, an account proposed by the Mennonite conflict resolution scholar John Paul Lederach—widens the performative implications of Catholic social teaching’s twofold commitment to human dignity and justice.
Consider more specifically the long-held stance of Catholic social teaching that structural change is needed for the kind of justice that it advocates and envisions. An injustice is not simply an interpersonal wrong but oftentimes a social sin, which is to say a wrong perpetuated by our embeddedness in political and economic systems and institutions. But the call for structural change, as true as it is, is easier said than done. It is one thing to see the need for structural change and quite another to offer an account of how to effect such a change. Given the systemic hold that our modern social structures, systems, and institutions have on our lives—in masking and perpetuating inequalities (whether racial, gender, class)—we might reasonably wonder whether anything less than revolutionary action will be adequate to the task of resisting and transforming our social structures. By revolutionary I do not mean the use of violence, in some form, to change our political and economic structures, institutions, and ideologies, though some may be tempted in this direction. Instead, I have in mind the lives exemplified by the likes of Yuri Kochiyama, Dorothy Day, and Daniel Berrigan, whose pursuit of justice were by most measures extraordinary (especially in terms of their self-sacrifice). They and many others within the Christian (and especially Catholic Christian) tradition embodied radical forms of what we might call just peacemaking, as alternatives to what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.” Yet, as important as these examples are in challenging our moral imagination and practice, they can also render structural or social change an unrealistic task, which can, in turn, engender dismissiveness, maybe even reinforce a feeling of helplessness and despair. How can I possibly refuse and change “the system” like these “saints” while tending to my familial and professional responsibilities? one might ask. Can Catholic social teaching offer an alternative account of social change that relies less on what we might call heroic acts of just peacemaking? Alternatively, can daily small gestures or practices be just as significant as these extraordinary acts?
This question is not unlike the one that Lederach raises with respect to the “critical mass” strategy for peacebuilding. This strategy assumes a “linear” model of nonviolent social change, which “happens” when there is widespread political awareness and then mass mobilization (Lederach, 88). On this view, “quantity” matters (89). But Lederach is quick to point out that such a metric, while often the case at the start of social movements (think nonviolent civil disobedience such as mass protests against racist policing), fails to effect social change over the long run. Getting large numbers of people onto the streets often turns out to be “ephemeral and short-lived” and “incapable of generating a sustained process of social change” (90-91). Once the masses dissipate, so does the cause. Lederach thus thinks that what is required is closer attention to the “quality of the catalyst” for social change. For Lederach, it is the “small things” (which often eludes media attention) that root a more durable form of social change. But what are these small things, the “critical yeast,” as he also calls them, in contrast to the strategy of critical mass? (91). Lederach’s attention is on the “few strategically connected people” who have the “potential for creating the social growth of an idea” (92), who, in other words, can “bring a much wider set of people with them” and create the momentum for widespread social change (93-94).
Lederach operates on the premise that it is the building of relationships (or reforming and repairing our relationships, often from relationships of opposition, antagonism, resentment—i.e., us versus them—to relationships of trust and mutuality) that constitute the small things that spark enduring forms of nonviolent social change. In that respect, the seeds of such change can be sown anywhere, in any space that human persons interact with one another, “From schools to hospitals, from markets to housing and transportation….” (96). Poor relational interactions in these social spaces can reinforce the status quo (cycles of violence, more specifically), while the converse can “[bring] about a broader transformation in the whole” (97). He uses the term “mediative capacities” to call attention to the “quality of relational interactions”—“attitudes, skills, and disciplines”—that generate cooperation, mutuality, or peace (95).
We might do well to articulate Lederach’s emphasis on mediative capacities as the need for swapping one kind of social practice for another. In a foundational account, social practices initiate and inculcate us into preexisting standards and norms of thinking and behavior (MacIntyre, 190). Other accounts extend this conception by calling attention to how the embodiment of such standards and norms “distribute goods and ills around a community and its boundaries” (Farneth, 37). More specifically, “Social practices regulate who within a group has access to which goods and ills: who occupies which roles; who exercises power and in which domains; who benefits from and who is burdened by what” (35). In this way, social practices are a reflection of a particular conception of justice, of how we ought to relate with one another and who merits what and how.
Thinking about Lederach’s conception of mediative capacities (or the kinds of relationships or relational capital that mitigate or break cycles of violence) as certain kinds of social practices is useful insofar as it helps us to think about how social structures maintain their hold on persons and how that hold begins to loosen. A social structure is reflected in a particular set of social practices, and the more one embodies these social practices, the more durable the social structure in question. So, for instance, consumerism (which consists of an amalgam of practices reflecting expediency, disposability, accumulation, etc.) reinforces the social structures of capitalism and its account of the good. But once those practices shift (e.g., supplemented by other practices, to being exposed to them, and the curiosity to test them out), so does eventually the grip that the structure and its underlying account of the good has on the person. In this vein, lasting changes to a social structure may require legal codification (juridical action and new public policy), but the catalyst for that change begins when we vary our social practices and thus our moral perception. While we are habituated by a particular structure, we inhabit a certain logic or rationality that makes sense within that structural environment. Consumerism, therefore, is not a nonrational or mindless activity but as a social practice it is reflective of a particular way of seeing, thinking about, and being in the world; it is quite rational, even though we may not have come to such activity “initially as a result of reasoning” (Stout, 216). But when we begin to mix up our social practices—“[try] out new arrangements” ( 224)—we begin to loosen the epistemological and ultimately performative hold that a particular structure might have on us. As we differentiate our practices, we begin to see ourselves and others differently, sparking the thought that perhaps the way things are need not be this way.
That we are our social practices helps us to envision what Lederach’s conception of mediative capacities (again, the seemingly “small” relational interactions that foster peacemaking and cooperation rather than conflict) looks like in the concrete, how they are manifested, in other words, in the everyday. What we might think of as an ordinary act or gesture, e.g., a widespread custom, is not morally neutral but indicative of a particular way of being in relationship. Such relationality either reinforces or contests a particular vision of the good. “Think of an act of genuflection before a religious or political leader. That genuflection enacts the deference that the person understanding the act is supposed to show toward the leader, reflecting and embodying the power differential between them” (Farneth, 46). But how might the act of a handshake and an embrace reconfigure such relations of power, and what might the consequences be when such an alternative act is practiced over the long-term, as it becomes a new custom? (We might also ask the same with respect to so many of our other common practices: biking or walking instead of driving, talking on the phone versus texting, cooking versus takeout, reading the paper versus social media, and so on.) Attending to the role of social practices in social change reorients our critical attention to daily habits and the vision of life they inscribe. Rituals such as contemplative prayer can aid in this evaluative task. (H. Richard Niebuhr advocated for the renewal of penance, a form of “rigid self-analysis,” as a way of reckoning with Christianity’s complicity with militarism and imperialism.)
Regardless of the specific ritual, sacrament, custom, or routine, what I want to press is the notion that promoting justice and defending human dignity need not only hinge on grand self-sacrificial gestures, like those, as noted above, practiced by Christian activists such as Day and Berrigan, Kochiyama, or even King. That social structures are sustained by social practices suggests that the everyday is consequential too and dispels the notion that smaller or more mundane acts are too paltry and thus powerless to effect the kind of structural change justice requires. Thus, one question that cannot be ignored is whether our daily behavior or patterns of practice promote forms of relationality that disincentivizes us from, as Pope Francis would put it, encountering others. But even the notion of encounter can sometimes feel extraordinary (maybe, more precisely, supererogatory)—Francis’s account of encounter as exemplified in the Samaritan’s act of compassion in Luke 10:25-37 certainly feels that way. (Who has the courage, the time, and the means to give oneself so completely to the other, as the Samaritan does?—this is not an uncommon sentiment, I think.) But if daily practice is reflective of a particular social-structural logic, then we can also look to and rely on, as Lederach puts it, the small things to help build the foundation for the kind of structural change that justice for all demands.
It is this focus on the small things—on shifting, adjusting, or experimenting with as something as simple or seemingly insignificant as our daily social practices—that demonstrates how a transformation of our social structures can happen at the local or micro level. Focusing on the small things, therefore, affords a way of envisioning the social-structural change that Catholic social teaching sees as crucial as a form of radical, nonviolent politics that is perceptible or legible and, perhaps more significantly, workable across demographically diverse communities.
