At Resurgence Consulting we talk a lot about social justice, anti-oppressive practice and about “power-conscious” work and approaches. We totally get this is a bit jargon-y, and we know for some folks you may have no idea what we are going on about. For other folks you know damn right what these concepts are about – we want to be clear on what they mean to us.

So here is a brief introduction or refresh of some of those concepts and how we integrate them.

Anti-oppressive practice

• concept used in areas like social work, education, healthcare, anti-racism, equity work. It looks at how society privileges certain unearned and unchangeable characteristics and deems them the preferred norm (like whiteness, heterosex, cisgender, able bodied, male, and many more). Any characteristic outside of the norm is considered “other” and systemically treated differently and oppressed- they are considered less than because they are different in some way than the preferred norm.
• Power conscious approaches are just that – bringing all forms of power to light and making us more aware of how power in all its forms operates in our work.
• “Power to” and “Power with” are our preferred approach and end goal. Our processes – how we work, mirror our desired outcomes for people and organizations. To increase your capacity to achieve your goals -rather than create dependency on others. Through our work, no matter what the task, we look to unlock the idea and create the conditions that we all have the “power to…”.

This concept also means that people in positions of power and privilege understand and take action on the opportunities to share their power – this is also “power to…” power to others…

We think this is a key in being an ally or an advocate for equity.

Through this work we want to help folks understand how “power over” approaches are counterproductive to healthy employees, healthy workplaces and ultimately a healthy society.

Social justice is about distribution of resources. We adopt this term as an overarching concept to our workSocial Justice seeks to ensure the resources available in society are equally available to all people’s through access, participation and the manifestation of rights.

Social justice cannot be obtained in our society without applying and implementing equity approaches.

So in a rather large nutshell that’s what we mean when we use these terms.

We always welcome feedback to help us broaden our thinking! We are happy to also chat about how we integrate this Into HR, program development, strategic planning, community engagement, organizational assessments, training and management development.