Dancing with Data: A Collaborative and Critical Qualitative Inquiry (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2016
Based on the need to address the empirical reticence in the leadership literature revolving around networking dynamics in school governance, I conducted a case study of a Maltese multi-site school collaborative, the findings of which are represented in a semi-fictionalized narrative dramatization. This article focuses on the crafting of this narrative dramatization and the rationale behind this choice of narrative in social science. In depicting my rather unconventional mode of data representation, I demonstrate how a researcher attempts to negotiate the methodological tensions and contradictions in qualitative inquiry in order to construct knowledge differently. Through an understanding of my unique voice in research, I consider how representation will always remain incomplete. Furthermore, I argue for a continuous reconceptualization of validity as unpredictable and undecidable, while troubling the notions of transcription, translation and ‘verbatim’ in my research. Acknowledging the importance of textuality, I comprehend the significance of the writing process in my research, rather than just the product of my inquiry.
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Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, 2016
This article outlines the debate around the emancipatory claims of community-based research (CBR) and identifies discursive frictions as a pivotal point upon which much of CBR practice revolves. Using a Foucauldian theoretical lens, we suggest that CBR is neither inherently emancipatory nor repressive, but that research outcomes are more often a product of power asymmetries in CBR relationships. To illustrate how power asymmetries in research relationships produce discursive frictions, several studies from our work and the literature are presented. The article provides examples of CBR relationships between the researcher and community members and relationships within the community to illustrate how power asymmetries and discursive frictions in these relationships dynamically influence research outcomes and thus alert researchers to the need to address power asymmetries not just before initiating CBR projects, but during CBR projects as well. We interrogate how power asymmetries and discursive frictions operate and are constructed in CBR in an attempt to highlight how research might be conducted more effectively and ethically. Finally, we indicate that some of the tensions and challenges associated with CBR might be ameliorated by the use of participatory facilitation methodologies, such as photo-voice and story circle discussion groups, that draw attention to power asymmetries and purposefully use more creative participatory tools to restructure power relationships and ultimately address the inequities that exist in the research process. Because CBR is continually caught up in power dynamics, we hope that highlighting some examples might offer an opportunity for increased dialogue and critical reflection on its claims of empowerment and emancipation.
The literature suggests that community-based participatory research holds the potential to democratize and decolonize knowledge production by engaging communities and citizens in the research enterprise. Yet this approach, and its associated claims, remain under theorized, particularly as to how power circulates between and among academic and community knowledge work/ers. This paper puts forth a postcolonial analysis of participatory techniques that sustain academe's epistemic privilege through producing, subordinating and assimilating difference; claiming authenticity and voice; and dislocating collaborative knowledge work from the historical, political, social and embodied conditions in which it unfolds.
The collective method: collaborative social science research and scholarly accountability
Qualitative Research, 2017
This article conceptualizes the collective method to describe how 12 scholars worked collaboratively to study the effects of displacement following Hurricane Katrina. The collective method is defined as an integrated, reflexive process of research design and implementation in which a diverse group of scholars studying a common phenomenon-yet working on independent projects-engage in repeated theoretical and methodological discussions to improve (1) research transparency and accountability and (2) the rigor and efficacy of each member’s unique project. This process generates critical discussions over researchers’ and respondents’ positionality, the framework of intersectionality, and applied ethics. Informed by feminist theoretical and methodological considerations of reflexivity, insider-outsider positionality, power relations, and social justice, the collective method can enhance scholars’ standpoints regarding philosophical, ethical, and strategic issues that emerge in the researc...
08/06/2021 Collaborative Praxis: Unbinding Neoliberal Tethers of Academia * Feminista Journal
Feminista Journal, 2021
In the course of our conversations in conceptualising this piece, we agreed on three things – a) we adapt to no form of homogeneity, b) we hold space for each other and b) we ponder on various forms of collective and collaborative working. In using each of these terms as our thinking praxis, we have tried to illuminate facets of academia as it displaces us (in the form/identity we inhabit). We open our discussion with the neoliberal conditions that inhibit our agencies in the university. For instance, neoliberalism forces us into an isolationist, individualist conception of labour where structural inequality is made invisible and a politics of care untenable. Similarly, unpacking our positionality illuminates the creation of value and worth through gender as a colonial social construct. “If woman and black are terms for homogeneous, atomic, separable categories”, writes Maria Lugones, “then their intersection shows us the absence of black women rather than their presence”. Worth and value, then, are located in the bodies that are most proximally institutional, if not the institutions themselves.[1] Denial of worth and value, together with isolation, invariably leads us to an urgency to create community and collectives – things that are integral to feminist movements. And in centering these communitarian and collective praxes, we also come in direct existential confrontation with academia itself. To find what resonates to our experiences that are distinctive in themselves, but communicative on a common struggle. In this piece, we hope to rage through these sites of disenfranchisement and other fractures while simultaneously trying to imagine ways in which collaboration centers itself in academia.
Qualitative Research as Partial Connection: Bypassing the Power-Knowledge Nexus
Qualitative Research 5(1): 59-77., 2005
A B S T R AC T Qualitative research and methods are often imagined as relating to a problematic, which we here term the power-knowledge nexus. We argue that the dichotomy between power and knowledge, instantiated, for example, by recent postmodern contributions to the field, is theoretically and empirically problematic and suggest that they are organized around a 'bad problem' . This characterization points us towards an exploration of theoretical and practical consequences entailed by the suspension of the powerknowledge nexus. We suggest that there is a need for a renewed consideration of the capacities of qualitative research. We initiate such discussion by drawing on insights and illustrations from contemporary feminist theory and science and technology studies (STS). K E Y W O R D S : knowledge, partial connection, power, qualitative methods, qualitative research, STS Qualitative research as partial connection: bypassing the power-knowledge nexus Qualitative Research
Abstracts, Oral Presentations for Qualitative Methods Conference, May 2016
International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2016
While the importance of collaborative research and collaborative discovery cannot be understated, what accompanies such work can be a myriad of difficulties for the researcher and a number of barriers for ''the researched.'' What are the rich possibilities of discovery that can be achieved by doing collaborative research? What are some inherent barriers in collaborative research work? How can an ethical review process become an institutionalized political process? How do institutional political interests trump those of discovery, knowledge production, and progress? In this presentation, I offer some answers to these questions and pose further ones for critical thought. I report on a current research project-an institutional ethnography-which involves several educational institutions (and at one point, a hospital). The very obstacles-the institutional ''red tape''-and its implications for doing collaborative research are the focus of this presentation.