Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot learned early from experience the meaning of respect. Her book, “Respect” is a series of stories about people she calls “practitioners of respect”. I love this phrase; it’s an elegant expression, elevating respect to the level of learned professionalism. Her insights come from hours of collaboration with and observations of these practitioners as they went about their daily activity, each one revealing different “dimensions of respect” that often go unnoticed.

Think of “learned professionalism” as the lawyer who learns how to practice law or the doctor who learns the practice of health care or the person who excels at being a motivational speaker. In these examples and many others they are regarded as professionals in their field. Likewise, we should consider respect as a learned skill; a behavior, that when steadily practiced becomes professionalized.

Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot captures respectful behaviors with individual stories of two health-care providers, a school teacher, an artist-photographer, an Episcopal priest and a law school professor. Each story reveals a dimension of respect through either: empowerment; healing; dialogue; curiosity; self-respect or attention.

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It's good to give, it's good to get. Respect: An Exploration (2000) by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot works at understanding this crucial aspect of human relationships through the stories of six people. Each of these messengers works in a field where respect is vital and represents a different qualities of respect:

• Empowerment: Jennifer Dohrn, a nurse-midwife who founded and directs a childbearing clinic in the South Bronx.


• Healing: Johnye Ballenger, a pediatrician.


• Dialogue: Kay Cottle, a middle and high school teacher.


• Curiosity: Dawoud Bey, a photographer/artist.


• Self-Respect: David Wilkins, a law professor.


• Attention: Bill Wallace, pastoral therapy to the dying in hospice.

Each portrait is part interview, part Lawrence-Lightfoot's observations of that person at work, and part biography. The case study method lends itself to a bit of cheesiness, but not too much, and not in a negative fashion.

I find it hard to summarize the book any further as it is through the interplay of these many factors where respect is teased out. Read it yourself to find out. ( )