My interdisciplinary research program is motivated by a desire to understand and strengthen social movements working towards social and ecological justice. My research aims to improve the internal function of social movements so that they can better overcome external constraints, such as the concentrated economic power of elites, and more effectively address pressing challenges like climate change, white supremacy, settler colonialism, heterosexism, and economic inequality. My work cuts across three main areas – political theory, social movement strategy, and political economy – in order to develop an integrated and critical understanding of the challenges social movements face.
I am currently writing a book -- Radical Mindfulness -- that inquires into the root causes of injustice, asking why injustices along the axes of race, class, gender, sexuality, and species continue to persist. This work is centered on a generally overlooked explanation for unjust social relations, one that emphasizes the political force of existential resentment, especially the fear of death. My contention is that existential resentment plays a primary role in the recurrence of unjust social relations and that until social movements begin incorporating strategies that can transform existential fears, injustice will persist. My research has been focused on the transformative potential of mind/body practices such as mindfulness meditation within the context of social movements.
Thinkers I am engaging for this work include James Baldwin, Chogyam Trungpa, Audre Lorde, Michel Foucault, John Mohawk, Leanne Betasamosake Simpon, Ernest Becker and William Connolly. In 2015 I published a journalistic article - "Zen and the Art of Social Movement Maintenance" - based on this research in Waging Nonviolence. I also contributed the essay "Micropolitics and Collective Liberation: Mind/Body Practice and Left Social Movements" to a recent symposium on "Mindfulness and Politics" in the journal New Political Science. The essay "Georges Bataille, Chogyam Trungpa, and Radical Transformation: Theorizing the Political Value of Mindfulness" was recently published by the Arrow: Journal of Wakeful Society, Culture, and Politics.
Other related works include "Is a Fear of Death at the Heart of Capitalism" in the Arrow; "Learning to Love Us-Versus-Them Thinking" in openDemocracy; "Lessons from the Frontlines of Anti-Colonial Pipeline Resistance" in Waging Nonviolence; and "Toilet Paper as Terror Management" in openDemocracy. In 2017, I was interviewed by CBC Radio about the political effects of mindfulness. Most recently, I was interviewed about this research by the Ernest Becker Foundation.
I am also a co-investigator with the Corporate Mapping Project, focused particularly on the role of finance in facilitating and blocking needed energy transition. Work on this project has been published with Corporate Knights, The Narwhal, openDemocracy, the National Observer, the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Province, and the Tyee.ca. This research has been covered by numerous media outlets including, the Huffington Post, The Atlantic, CBC Radio, The Narwhal, iPolitics, the National Observer and the Victoria Times Colonist. Most recently, this research was featured on CBC Radio's climate change show, What on Earth.
Below is a list of other recent writings (with open access links):
Belliveau, E. & Rowe, J. & Dempsey, J. (2021). "Fossil Fuel Divestment, Non-reformist Reforms and Anti-capitalist Strategy." W. Carroll (Ed.), Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press.
Rowe, J. & Corntassel, J. & Lowan, E. & Watts, J. (2021). "UVic Takes a Big Step Towards Fossil Fuel Divestment." National Observer.
Rowe, J. (2020). "Baldwin and Buddhism: Death Denial, White Supremacy, and the Promise of Racial Justice." The Arrow.
Rowe, J. (2020). "The Green New Deal, Decolonization, And/as Ecocritique." New Political Science 42:4, pp. 624–630.
Rowe, J. & Glanzmann, S. & Dempsey, J. & Yunker, Z. (2019). Fossil Futures: The Canada Pension Plan's Failure to Respect the 1.5 Degree Limit. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Rowe, J. & Shotwell, A. (2019). "Canada's Vampire Pension Plan." The Bullet.
Yunker, Z. & Dempsey, J. & Rowe, J. (2018). Canada's Fossil-Fuelled Pensions: The Case of the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Rowe, J. & Peredo, A & Sullivan, M. & Restakis, J. (2018). Policy Supports for Co-operative Development: Learning from Co-op Hot Spots. Journal of Cooperative Studies 51:1.
Rowe, J. & Peredo, A & Sullivan, M. & Restakis, J. (2017). Co-operative development, policy, and power in a period of contested neoliberalism: The case of Evergreen Co-operative Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio. Socialist Studies 11:2.
Rowe, J. & Peredo, A. & Restakis, J. (2017). How the NDP and Greens and Grow BC's Cooperative Economy. The Tyee.
Smith, T.L. & Rowe, J. (2017). Pipelines as Sun Tunnels: Visualizing Alternatives to Carboniferous Capitalism. C-Theory.
Rowe, J. et al. (2017). First Nations Show Leadership in Pipeline Debates. Times Colonist.
Rowe, J. (2017). Upstream and Downstream: The Sacred Importance of Joining Contemplative Practice and Political Engagement. The Arrow: A Journal of Wakeful Society, Culture, and Politics.
Rowe, J. & Dempsey, J & Gibbs, P. (2016). The Power of Fossil Fuel Divestment (And its Secret). W.K. Carroll, K. Sarker (Eds.), A World To Win: Contemporary Social Movements and Counter-Hegemony. Winnipeg: ARP Books.
Collard, R. & Dempsey, J. & Rowe, J. (2016). Re-Regulating socioecologies under neoliberalism. S. Springer, K. Birch, and J. MacLeavy (Eds.), The Handbook of Neoliberalism. New York: Routledge.
Rowe, J. & Carroll, M. (2015). What the left can learn from Occupy Wall Street. Studies in Political Economy 96:1, pp. 145–166.
Rowe, J. & Carroll, M. (2014). Reform or radicalism: Left social movements from the Battle of Seattle to Occupy Wall Street. New Political Science 36:2, pp. 149–171.