“Creating Smooth Spaces in Striated Places”: Toward a Global Theory for Examining Social Justice Leadership in Schools

Abstract

This chapter shares an original social justice framework that emerged in conjunction with conducting a 2-year ethnography studying the culture of an urban all-girls’ secondary school. I refer to this new interpretive lens as “Facilitating social justice by creating smooth spaces in striated places” or the striated-smooth construct. The meaning-making that occurred during and after the study did not follow a firm temporal chronology or emerge linearly within tidy categorical disciplines. Essentially, my path of learning was a porous and rhizomatic interlacing of past, present, and future – germinating from the intellectual, spiritual, and corporeal –scaffolding upon knowledge, faith, and lived experience. In short, this theory-building experience was more akin to dialogue between mind, soul, and body. Rather than “own” this theory of social justice and explicitly detail a list of “rules” one must follow, I offer this inspiration as just one conception of social justice that might be used to facilitate the creative thinking of others that has potential to move the field forward as well as be applied to other societal contexts.