Embodied Dialogic Love: How Restorative Justice Facilitators Perceive Power and Offer Meaningful Disruptions

Abstract

As Restorative Justice (RJ) programs emerge throughout the U.S. as alternatives to the Western adjudication system, I examine an understudied yet impactful element of RJ: facilitators. RJ itself is a framework rooted in Indigenous worldviews to reveal intersectionality in our relationships especially after a harm has occurred in order to restore harmony and pursue justice in the community. Nevertheless, when situated within or in partnership with the domination systems of the U.S. that intersectionally oppress such as the criminal-legal system, significant tensions emerge. RJ facilitators are a locus of sociopolitical and institutional frames whose positionality and role are not only a unique, understudied perspective from which to critically examine the relationship between RJ programs and state institutions but also can interrupt historically oppressive power dynamics. This dissertation examines how RJ facilitators navigate the complexities of power, identity, and institutions to create dialoguing environments focused on self-determined healing. Through in-depth interviews with 23 RJ facilitators across the U.S., I investigated how facilitators conceptualized themselves and RJ in relation to power. From the data and through women of color feminist and grounded theory analysis, a grounded framework emerged to conceptualize the localized practices and perceptions of RJ facilitators: Embodied Dialogic Love (EDL). This framework provided an understanding of how facilitators engage with their own identities and situate themselves in relation to power through RJ processes and programs. Ultimately, I argue that Embodied Dialogic Love is a reflexive and communicative framework practiced by restorative justice facilitators that guides how they create meaningful disruptions to craft healing environments while navigating complex tensions they face when addressing systems of power. Facilitators adopting an EDL framework demonstrated an orientation to care for others and centralized the needs of the parties, meaning facilitators also held a heightened awareness, understanding, and curiosity for their own embodied social identities and the ways in which their social location and historic institutional power and relationships impacted their work. Facilitators communicated embodied love by co-creating a dialogic environment where they sought to empower parties to pursue healing while also interrupting institutional power and navigating tensions. By conceptualizing RJ and RJ facilitator practices and perceptions through EDL, this project contributes to larger discourses on social change (particularly in restorative justice), the future of RJ and its relationship to state institutions, and how facilitators operate as powerful players who interrupt power, co-create dialoguing spaces, and foster collective empowerment for self-determined healing.