Mutual Accompaniment and the Creation of the Commons

373 Pages·2019·2.893 MB·English

by  Mary Watkins, George Lipsitz, G. A. Bradshaw

More praise for Mutual Accompaniment and
the Creation of the Commons
“In this wide-ranging, thoughtful, insightful, and infi nitely generative book,
Watkins crystallizes, distills, analyzes, and augments the long history of the
practice that has become known as accompaniment. She illuminates diverse
and varied places of origin and implementation of different forms of accom-
paniment connected to struggles for dignity, decency, and democracy. . . . It
is a book for our time that is right on time.”—From the Foreword by George
Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place
“A groundbreaking book that reveals the heart of an activist. Mary Watkins’
wonderful and accessible stories of accompaniment have the potential to
transform the very structures of human service provision.”—Lynne Layton,
Harvard Medical School
“In this book, ‘accompaniment’ is presented as a preferred approach to psy-
chotherapy; as recognition of the web of life; and as an alternative to capital-
ism. An absorbing read.”—Staughton Lynd, author of Accompanying:
Pathways to Social Change and co-editor with Alice Lynd of Nonviolence in
America: A Documentary History
“An original and signifi cant intervention that will have far-ranging appeal to
students of psychology, anthropology, and cultural studies. This book
holds the potential of becoming a classic.”—Deanne Bell, University of East
London
“Watkins speaks about the need for providers to go beyond their privileged
comfort levels and address the real needs of the people we aim to serve and
support.”—Chakira M. Haddock Lazala, Ph.D.
“Quite creative and amazingly integrative.”—Darcia Narvaez, University
of Notre Dame, author of Neurobiology and the Development of Human
Morality: Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom
“This original and impressively thorough book has the potential to estab-
lish ‘psychosocial accompaniment’ as a primary mode of practice in the
helping professions. It is the perfect antidote to widespread indifference
to human suffering.”—Tod Sloan, Lewis and Clark College, author of
Damaged Life: The Crisis of the Modern Psyche
“A timely book, full of delightful anecdotes and practical guidance. Mary
Watkins has crafted an extraordinary story of a nearly forgotten practice.”—
Peter Westoby, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, co-author
of Participatory Development Practice: Using Traditional and Contempo-
rary Frameworks
Mutual Accompaniment and the
Creation of the Commons
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Mutual
Accompaniment
and the Creation
of the Commons
Mary Watkins
With a Foreword by George Lipsitz and
a Contribution by G. A. Bradshaw
New Haven & London
Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of James Wesley
Cooper of the Class of 1865, Yale College.
Copyright © 2019 by Mary Watkins.
Chapter 8, “Nonhuman Animal Accompaniment,” copyright © 2019 by G. A. Bradshaw.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or
promotional use. For information, please e-mail [e-mail] (U.S. offi ce) or
[e-mail] (U.K. offi ce).
Set in Bulmer type by IDS Infotech Ltd., Chandigarh, India.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960645
ISBN 978-0-300-23614-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To all those who have deepened into lives graced by mutual accompaniment,
who have rejected disregarding their neighbors, human and other-than-human,
who have nurtured their courage and perseverance, shared the risks of resistance,
and created in the face of diffi culty: thank you.
Your loving solidarity prefi gures the commons-to-come,
providing us bread for our journeys.
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If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time.
But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine,
then let us work together.
—Aboriginal Activist Group, Queensland, Australia, 1970s