Sarah Fessenden | University of British Columbia (original) (raw)

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Papers by Sarah Fessenden

In Youth at the Margins: Experiences from Engaging Youth in Research Worldwide. Bastien, Sheri and Halla B. Holmarsdottir, eds. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

While affirming a place for participatory and collaborative ethnography, in this chapter I challe... more While affirming a place for participatory and collaborative ethnography, in this chapter I challenge a reductive understanding of engaged research that suggests this method is a kind of “silver bullet” for the ethical complexities of working with youth at the margins. I highlight the ways in which I did not empower the anarcho-punk youth with whom I worked in Barcelona, Spain. Instead, like Juris (2007), I propose an insider-activist ethnographic approach to ethically navigate research relationships with marginalized youth and to co-empower both researcher and research subjects. Recognizing colonial impositions on local people and culture (see Deloria, 1973) can include an interrogation of “empowerment.” In order to affirm both power differentials and agentive strategy, I propose a relativistic framework in order to understand “marginal” youth on their own terms. To this end, this chapter begins with a theoretical explanation and ethnographic description of the anarchist-inspired autonomous politics I encountered engaging with anarcho-punk youth. Second, I look at dominant socio-cultural frames that ascribe marginality and, in so doing, obscure alternative ways of being. Third, drawing on precedents set primarily in anthropology, I suggest that engaged and, specifically, insider-activist research can be methodologically and ethically beneficial. Finally, I take from my own research experience to demonstrate the possibility of working toward co-empowerment. Overall, the goal of this chapter is to suggest that “the voiceless” have voices and that it is the responsibility of the researcher to find ethical and scientifically sound methods to hear and re-present it well.

When the cover is pulled back on a Dumpster, a taboo is enacted. In this space of death, the sigh... more When the cover is pulled back on a Dumpster, a taboo is enacted. In this space of death, the sights, smells, and textures blend so that the savvy Dumpster diver asks, “why was this discarded?” (Eighner 1991). Such evaluation moves food-waste(d) from its death sentence as trash into an afterlife as food that is good to eat and good to share. Drawing on research conducted in Barcelona, Spain, I explore the affective dimensions of such recycling, its concomitant moralities, those “shifty materialities” met in spaces of decay (DeSilvey 2006), and the political-economics of moving food-waste(d) from Dumpster to table.

In Youth at the Margins: Experiences from Engaging Youth in Research Worldwide. Bastien, Sheri and Halla B. Holmarsdottir, eds. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

While affirming a place for participatory and collaborative ethnography, in this chapter I challe... more While affirming a place for participatory and collaborative ethnography, in this chapter I challenge a reductive understanding of engaged research that suggests this method is a kind of “silver bullet” for the ethical complexities of working with youth at the margins. I highlight the ways in which I did not empower the anarcho-punk youth with whom I worked in Barcelona, Spain. Instead, like Juris (2007), I propose an insider-activist ethnographic approach to ethically navigate research relationships with marginalized youth and to co-empower both researcher and research subjects. Recognizing colonial impositions on local people and culture (see Deloria, 1973) can include an interrogation of “empowerment.” In order to affirm both power differentials and agentive strategy, I propose a relativistic framework in order to understand “marginal” youth on their own terms. To this end, this chapter begins with a theoretical explanation and ethnographic description of the anarchist-inspired autonomous politics I encountered engaging with anarcho-punk youth. Second, I look at dominant socio-cultural frames that ascribe marginality and, in so doing, obscure alternative ways of being. Third, drawing on precedents set primarily in anthropology, I suggest that engaged and, specifically, insider-activist research can be methodologically and ethically beneficial. Finally, I take from my own research experience to demonstrate the possibility of working toward co-empowerment. Overall, the goal of this chapter is to suggest that “the voiceless” have voices and that it is the responsibility of the researcher to find ethical and scientifically sound methods to hear and re-present it well.

When the cover is pulled back on a Dumpster, a taboo is enacted. In this space of death, the sigh... more When the cover is pulled back on a Dumpster, a taboo is enacted. In this space of death, the sights, smells, and textures blend so that the savvy Dumpster diver asks, “why was this discarded?” (Eighner 1991). Such evaluation moves food-waste(d) from its death sentence as trash into an afterlife as food that is good to eat and good to share. Drawing on research conducted in Barcelona, Spain, I explore the affective dimensions of such recycling, its concomitant moralities, those “shifty materialities” met in spaces of decay (DeSilvey 2006), and the political-economics of moving food-waste(d) from Dumpster to table.