'Taking Responsibility for the White Collective' : Implicated Subjects and Transformative Justice in the United States

Title data

McEvoy, Bretton J.:
'Taking Responsibility for the White Collective' : Implicated Subjects and Transformative Justice in the United States.
In: International Journal of Transitional Justice. (2024) .
ISSN 1752-7724
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijae001

Official URL:

Abstract in another language

Transitional justice largely ignores that majority of actors who, though not directly responsible for violence, are structurally implicated in systems of injustice that (re)produce violence. Their absence is incompatible with the normative goals of the ‘transformative justice’ agenda, which include targeting the causes of (structural) violence, a project decidedly shaped by the presence of implicated subjects, especially in cases of historical injustice. This article engages a select group of implicated subjects – anti-racist white activists in the United States – to examine what their endeavours and struggles to reckon with their implication in the ongoing histories of racism and white supremacy can tell us about the boundaries of a transformative justice model. Drawing upon nine months of participant observation and 30 in-depth interviews within predominantly white activist spaces in the Greater Boston area, I contend that viewing transitional justice from the lens of implicated subjects serves to trouble the field’s transformative aspirations.

Further data

Item Type:	Article in a journal
Refereed:	Yes
Keywords:	Transitional Justice; Sociology; Activists; Race
Institutions of the University:	Faculties > Faculty of Cultural Studies Faculties > Faculty of Cultural Studies > Chair Sociology of Africa Faculties > Faculty of Cultural Studies > Chair Sociology of Africa > Chair Sociology of Africa - Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jana Hönke Faculties
Result of work at the UBT:	No
DDC Subjects:	300 Social sciences > 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
Date Deposited:	17 Apr 2024 09:25
Last Modified:	22 Apr 2024 05:38
URI:	https://eref.uni-bayreuth.de/id/eprint/89345