Revaluing Revisited

So my last post dealt mainly with posing the question: How can we rebrand our social change to increase perceived value?

I ignorantly tried to answer my own question by stating something to the effect of “we need to make the idea of affecting social change easier to handle”. While I still think this is a worthwhile goal, I think it deserves another look.

I’ve been reading up on an interesting idea called system justification theory. A recent article in the online Miller-McCune e-journal has a really good overview of the theory. Basically is a jargony term for explaining one of the biggest barriers to convincing people that a specific attempt at social change is, in fact, change for the better. As John Jost, a psychologist who helped coin the phrase, summed it up:

people are motivated to justify and rationalize the way things are, so that existing social, economic and political arrangements tend to be perceived as fair and legitimate

Thus, most people tend to justify the current state of things. People pushing for global health equity, however, are calling for change. I think you can see the confrontation that will arise…

But what can we do to turn this confrontation into inclusion? One of Jost’s more recent studies on system justification theory, in regards to environmental degradation, might give some insight into a viable answer. Jost writes that “system-sanctioned” campaigns for change actually help convince people to live greener lives.

Now, though, I wonder how we make global health equity campaigns “system-sanctioned”? That’s a pickle I’ll try to get out of next time…