Women’s’ Practices of Transformative Justice: The analysis of circles of women in Poland

Drawing on ethnographic research on the Circle of Women (CW) in Poland, i.e. self-organized groups of women that interact on regular basis (see Rodak, 2020), I introduce the women's healing practices as instances of transformative justice. The harm spoken out in the CW is mostly not recognized by the legal system or considered not worthy trying to get legal protection. Hence, due to the lack of normative responses, a vacuum sphere is self-regulated by an informal social initiative. Specifically, I treat the transformative healing processes activated in the CW as a social self-regulative process, indicating the need to address this dimension in a broader context, (Podgórecki 1991). However, the legal reparation system has only the regulation of individual claims (in a very narrow sense, as materially documented part of harm) and does not deal with injuries of a social - collective nature. The voice of women spoken in a circle often concerns harming experiences relations and symbolic and cultural violence. In the study it was observed that women in the circles not only express the harm experienced, but also participate in self reparation’s practices, that can be considered as an instance of healing justice/transformative justice. Through their practices women aim at rebuilding the sense of justice, agency, subjectivity for which did not find any support in other collective practices. In my presentation I will describe some instances of reparation practices including rituals and ceremonies in the CW, working with dreams and healing dolls as inner guides (followed by video materials) in order to discuss the foundation of transformative justice based on self-care as an alternative for the legal system. The emerging epistemic perspective is linked to the construction of a picture of reality in which the human being as a 'relational self' remains part of the natural world (not exclusively singled out by adopting the “dominant” attitude), is immersed in the cyclical rhythm of life (not in a linear narration) and is guided by an inner voice (which is externalized by working with healing dolls or dreams), independently from the dominant capitalist Western social trends. The research described in this article benefited from the grant by the National Center of Science, 2019/33/B/HS5/02863.