RELATIONAL RESPONSABILITY AND RESTORATIVE PRACTICES: BUILDING POSSIBILITIES FOR CHANGE

Abstract

Restorative justice (RJ) is considered an alternative approach of justice that seeks through restorative practices to build new senses of justice and transform the way of relating based on individualistic tradition, from relational and community ethics. In this theoretical essay, we seek to analyze restorative practices of conference victim-offender-community, familiar group conference and peacebuilding circle from the concept of relational responsibility and its domains of intelligibility, that is: internal others, conjoint relations, relations among groups and systemic process. The analysis carried out points out how the concept of relational responsibility contributes for restorative practices to broaden the domains of accountability for social conflicts, recognize the macro-social conditions of their production and implement a practice committed to facing the historical social injustices that permeate social conflicts. Otherwise, we are at risk of reproducing and sustaining a punitive model of justice.