Exploring the paper Kleinman, S. and Copp, M., 2009. Denying social harm: Students’ resistance to lessons about inequality. Teaching Sociology, 37(3), pp.283-293.
Blog four of five, in a series by Dr Chrissi McCarthy.
Kleinman. and Copp summarised four central beliefs that students held about social harm; these beliefs prevented students from seeing how the environments they were in impacted people’s behaviour.
Not every student held every belief to be true, and other beliefs were held; however, Kleinman. and Copp found these four beliefs to be strikingly common:
Harm happens when someone intentionally does something serious and obvious.
Students pictured harm as a single dramatic act by a ‘bad person’. Real‑life discrimination is often subtler than that.
Harm starts in the mind.
Students blamed individuals (‘bad apples’) and overlooked the environments, though jokes and routines that encourage harmful behaviour.”
There is always someone to blame for harm.
When there is no clear aggressor, students blame the victims by saying they did not work hard enough or care enough.
It can’t harm you if you enjoy it.
If someone enjoys an activity (for example, a ‘ladies’ night’), students find it hard to recognise its underlying sexism.
These core beliefs worked together to prevent students from seeing how harm was part of a wider picture, not an individual cause and effect.
Applying the learning
Using the beliefs as a foundation, Kleinman. and Copp then developed resources to help students develop their thinking, giving students control by assisting them to understand the hidden society they operate within.
They suggest several ideas, including.
- Shift students’ focus away from “good people” vs. “bad people”. Instead, they wanted students to focus on how social behaviours can reproduce or challenge inequality.
- Encourage students to think about the experiences through groups, not just as individuals.
- Consider who is harmed and who benefits in group situations
I apply Kleinman. and Copp‘s ideas in my EDI training, where participants are in a space where they expect to learn and engage. As a facilitator, I may be more likely to engage with the thinking exercises I provide. If you are in a similar situation, this paper could stand you in good stead.
Adding context
If we recall our earlier blogs, we discussed the need for context, emphasising that different environments present distinct challenges. So, we need to consider how we use this information in our various contexts.
Your environment may not be suitable for applying the ideas presented in the paper directly.
However, it may provide some ways to consider how we approach EDI challenges, even if the paper does not precisely dictate a specific course of action.
For example, if I were in charge of the culture in a large organisation, I would use the findings of the paper to inform any attempts I might make to determine if people in the company had faced discrimination. Instead of asking a question like
“Have you faced discrimination in your role?
Or even a softer
“Have you ever felt you were treated unfavourably at work because of a personal characteristic (for example age, gender, race, religion, disability or sexual orientation)?
The paper we discussed today warns me that people don’t always recognise unequal behaviour as such, and direct questions like this could prevent me from gaining an informed picture of my organisation.
If I want to understand what is going on, I need to think a little deeper. I might pick a specific area I want to know more about, such as applying for a promotion, and ask groups with power and without it how they experienced each step of the process. I would then compare the answers to see if different experiences were apparent. Then seek to address them.
Wider still
Understanding EDI as a sociological problem, by which I mean one that considers the way our society functions, can feel like we are now tackling a bigger problem. And we are.
If our approach to tackling inequality fails to recognise the wider underpinnings of people’s behaviours, we are unlikely to achieve the change we suggest we are looking for.
As EDI practitioners, we should not only recognise the sociological underpinnings that impact our thinking, but we should also apply that thinking to our work, at the very least considering how organisational environments shape behaviour and how that behaviour, in turn, reproduces or challenges inequalities.
If we only work to fix the individual and not the environment, we are like people endlessly picking up apples that keep falling off a lorry, when we just need to close the door.
