Equality in a Time of Crisis

University College Dublin

6-7th May 2010 Participative, Emancipatory, Feminist and Transformative

Ways of Doing Research

Professor Mary Darmanin

University of Malta

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Crisis and universities

• supposed ‘knowledge societies’• global asymmetries of knowledge• expertocracy

• mediocracy • corpocracy

• technocracy

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Responses outside PEFT

• praxis and political theory – Dallmayer

• the research imagination and the ‘right to research’ – Appadurai

• from maldistribution and misrecognition to representation-reframing disputes about justice- Fraser

• cosmopolitanism - Appiah

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Methodology

Sandra Harding’s (1987) distinction between

• method- techniques for gathering empirical research

• methodology – the theory of knowledge and the interpretative framework that guides a particular project

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an ontology, or theory of life

• world as socially determined• that can be described• rejecting binaries of self-and society• power and its capacity to hide its hand (s) • identity-neither fixed nor singular• inscribed in discourses (social relations)• embodied• intersectional

Intersectionality

We regard the concept of ‘intersectionality’ as signifying the complex, irreducible, varied, and

variable effects which ensue when multiple axis of differentiation-

economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential-intersect

in historically specific contexts. Brah, A. and A. Phoenix (2004)

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sexual orientation

religiondis/able-bodiedness

age

‘race’

citizenship

and so on …….

language

gender

social class

additive or constitutive?

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Interconnectedness of human life –an ontological sociality

• multiplicity of social relations• across all spatial scales • spatial inequality• spatial identities-places,

regions, nations• not naturally given• historically changing

‘overlapping communities of fate’ & ‘global covenant’ (Held, 2004)

‘cosmopolitanism- responsibilities’ Appiah, 2006

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Volcanic ash cost Malta €10m and 90,000 bed nights

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D. Smith (1987) The everyday world as problematic

Directs us to• ‘embodied’ subject located in particular local historical

setting• ‘everyday life’ constituted as our problematic• preserves presence of subjects as knowers and actors,

from where they stand• in determinate relations with those whose relations we

intend to express• but not rely on them for understanding of social relations

that shape and determine the everyday, by being restricted to the descriptive- move to interpretative and analytic

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Who speaks with whom?

• ‘Who speaks for whom?’ about power• The shift in social balance of power begins from a

position of differential power• Social research political- how we use our privilege for

social ends• A politics of involvement- who speaks with whom? • Representation as a political act- not essentialised or

naturalised but from a. history as members of marginalised groupb. not to lead to hierarchies of oppressionc. create solidarity not barriers of difference

COMMONALITY more than DIFFERENCE

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Study power across levels of analysis

1. Unit of analysis systemic, even if unit of data collection is particular slice, group, person, event or part of whole.

2. Including persons who benefit from social arrangements or merely ‘watch’.

3. Task to theorize across levels, interrogate movement of power across levels, social relations .

‘no unit too small to see fingerprint of the world’

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Dialogue and Imagination Dialogical practice • which transforms situated experience into situated knowledge

Imagination

• To produce other types of knowledge that are valuable

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Theory of knowledge/epistemology

• Everyday world as problematic• Standpoint theory/ positionality• Ethical• Does not erase Other• Reveals social relations – not a perspectivalism• Includes practical engagement -praxis• Normative issues• Leading to change

‘an ontological epistemology of participation’ A. K. Giri, 2006

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Methods

• That methods, including of analysis, should ‘reflect the forms of social life’

• Multi-method - where qualitative and quantitative intellectually and politically compatible.

• But ‘overcoming expediency’

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Where to start ?

• Unbearable oppression

• A tomato

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• amplifies demands and critiques from the ‘margins’• elaborates alternate possibilities for justice• signifies a fundamental right to ask, investigate, dissent and

demand what could be • shatters ‘lying world of consistency’• makes public ‘private ‘ troubles• reveals common social roots of these ‘private’ troubles• demonstrates differentiated consequences of social oppression distributed unevenly• privileges perspectives ‘that age on the bottom of social arrangements’

Fine and Torre, 2006

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illustrative cases

1. Opportunity Gap Research Project- urban and suburban youths’ experiences of racial & class justice & injustice in their New York City schools (Fine et al, 2005)

2. College-in-prison programme for women in a maximum security prison, New York (Fine and Torre, 2006)

3. Youth-focused initiatives in Dadaab Refugee Camps of NE Province, Kenya ( Cooper, 2005)

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Methods and processesOpportunity Gap Project• 2 day research camps- method and critical race theory• prepared survey on school community & trust & civic engagement• transcripts of all seniors tracked in AP/honours course• feedback to 8 school sites

College in Prison-• ‘methods’ camp, local history of struggle, social, feminist, critical race theory & methodology• craft research questions• 9-11 am sessions community of learners/community of researchers• multi-method, multi-site, multi-generational• focus group with current students and drop-outs; 20 interviews those outside• survey Faculty and administrators• archival research• focus group with children of prisoners• 36 month long recidivism data stratified by those in College and those not.

Dadaab Refugees- • 2 day methods’ workshop for 11 youth researchers• meetings, focus group discussions on interview guide• each prepared analysis summary• they interviewed 140 others, chosen by themselves• report; practice presentation for NGOs, went to Nairobi to present• email of report to other organisations

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• Full compositional analysis

• First fracturing analysis

• Contrastive/counter analysis

• Local excavation

• Policy in practice analysis

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On the tomato trail

• Freirean generative themes

• Existential experiences of the everyday

• Complex structural conditions

of globalisation

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SHOWeD ‘freewrite’ acronym

• What do you See here?

• What’s really Happening here?

• How does this relate to Our lives?

• Why does this problem (or asset) exist?

• What can we Do about it?

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The power of the visual

• condenses at once the everyday, the monumental and spectacular• immediate-fugitive moments of life, fugitive testimony, sensation of

living presence, ‘salvage ethnography’• aesthetically engaging (not just analysis)• potential for interrogation to release secrets (can be ‘read’ ) • irreducibility of objects/materiality of culture (not texts about things

only) • in the absence of more personal contact- visual, a way in• vantage points from which bodies see objects and vice versa• a ‘truth of the meaning of the object or image’ –realism

/verisimilitude ? (but also interpretation) • focus on unnoticed, unrecalled, invisible presence- power relations

that structure life including space, commodities etc. • spatial practices and representational spaces, as well as

representation of space

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hyperlink cinema as a model for PEFT research?

works through narratives works through juxtaposition/contrast works through oblique but justifiable global links is about interconnection/responsibility gives embodied account of non-unitary subjects simultaneously, if not knowingly, connected explores social, economic, political, sexual etc power relationships shows how power/love shift – multiple discursive sites uses mise en scene, flash-back and forward to fracture myth of

linearity (to question chronological regimes of path dependency) space for agency/salvation visual and aesthetic (music) to heighten response

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Conclusion

1. Recognise that academy is one of few remaining places in which dissent is possible

2. Injustice is not just a cognitive problem

(Fine et al 2006)

“To deny someone’s claim that she is in pain is not an intellectual failure, it is a spiritual failure.

The future between us is at stake.”

Veena Das, 2000