Restorative Kinship: Mothers of Color Transforming Family Relationships through Local Community Organizing

• In Event: 3451 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 1. Biography, Identity, and Social Bonds

Abstract

This article contributes to research on women of color organizers in the US, which has yet to document how experiences of local collective action shape the intimate kin relationships of local social movement participants. Using 47 in-depth interviews with community organizers and 15-months of participant observations of parent-led collective action, I examine the intricate intersecting processes of collective action and family life. Findings elucidate how leaders in the study, most of whom were African American and Latina mothers and grandmothers, coproduce community organizing and family life. I find that parent leaders build-in community organizing trainings, skills, and restorative justice techniques within their intimate kin relationships. Leaders engaged in what I call restorative kinship, a reflective and purposeful process of improving the social and emotional health of their families through the use of community organizing repertoires. These findings highlight implications for the mending and strengthening of families through a collective action model that is intentionally inclusive of families—effects that I argue not only support mothers of color to fight for the rights of their children and families, but also help them to construct and mend relationships necessary for social and emotional survival. Scholarship must recognize that collective action participation is not a one directional activity to achieve social or policy change, but rather a process that shapes and is constructed through gendered, raced, and classed kinship and community.

Author

• Jennifer E. Cossyleon, Johns Hopkins University