The Citizen’s Role in Creating a Climate of Justice

In the civic space, citizens with access to resources must learn how to respond to the civilians who need them in such a way that it changes the unjust social climate to a climate of justice. This Chapter explores three options of citizens responding to civilians: empathy, a commons approach, and the ethics of care. Jeremy Rifkin has argued that we have evolved to “the age of empathy,” but this approach ignores the difference between those who are privileged and those who are not. The commons approach invites all to become “commoners,” sharing and shaping a common future. This approach has attractions, but it ignores past injustices and the role of the rule of law in protecting civilians. The ethics of care does invite privileged citizens to listen to civilian claims to join them in repairing broken relationships and caring about justice.

In the Legacy of Marronage: The Sir George Williams Affair and Acts of Refusal, Protest, and Care

At its core, this article is concerned with the relationship between Black life and the university. It is focused on those working and studying in and at the interstices of the university—those for which the university itself was made to exclude; those for whom the university cannot begin to know how to include. By attending to the events of the 1969 Sir George Williams Affair, which took place in Montreal, Canada, as well as the events preceding it, I consider how the occupation of the ninth floor computer centre by the university’s Black students operated within a legacy of refusal that can be traced back to an earlier history of resistance, specifically, to acts of marronage. Moreover, this article will seek to advance how the siting of spaces for protest, resistance, and solidarity by Black students illustrates how a lineage of marronage is at once a continuance of a project and practice of an ethics of care.

The Feelings We Feel: Care and Community in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a show that focused on teaching children an ethics of caring for oneself and care for others. This article examines those ethics through the songs “I Like You As You Are” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.” It contends that these songs focus on a celebration of the self and others, welcoming individuals as they are into the community, and embracing authenticity. This article looks to understand these ethics in a contemporary setting and argues that Mister Rogers and the communal ethics of care that he taught are needed.

Of Dhammacārinī and Rematriation in Post-Genocidal Cambodia

The literature over the last three decades has been trying to account for the stories of resilience by Cambodians both in their homeland and diasporas through performance and literature, visual culture, and religion to undo the legacy of displacement and traumatic experience of the Cambodians during 1975–1979, known as the Khmer Rouge Genocidal period. The repatriation of Khmer refugees to their homeland during 1992–1993 poses a question of to what extent the physical return could replenish the richness of people’s lives deprived by war-time atrocities. Dhammayietra (peace march; 1992–2018) originated by and centered around the spiritual leadership of late Maha Ghosananda has, being an exemplar, tackled this challenge. Yet, are there any significant moral contributions and ethical leadership from other sources? This paper therefore seeks to highlight the under-recognized stories of ‘Dhammacārinī’ (Buddhist Woman Leader) of Cambodia in the light of the spirituality that emerged in the post-conflict reconstruction. Based on my ethnographic accounts and engagement with Dhammayietra (2009–2018), archival research and biographical and dharma books published by the two dhammacārinīs of Cambodia, I argue that these Buddhist woman leaders attempt to offer the people of Cambodia ‘rematriation’, where the ethics of care, nurture, interconnectedness and healing join forces to counter the legacy of devastation and desperation.