Equality in a Time of Crisis University College Dublin 6-7th May 2010

1. Equality in a Time of CrisisUniversity College Dublin6-7th May 2010 Participative, Emancipatory, Feminist and Transformative Ways of Doing Research Professor Mary Darmanin University of Malta

2. Crisis and universities • supposed ‘knowledge societies’ • global asymmetries of knowledge • expertocracy • mediocracy • corpocracy • technocracy

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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) Intersectionality

7. religion dis/able-bodiedness age ‘race’ and so on ……. citizenship sexual orientation language gender additive or constitutive? social class

8. 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

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

10. 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

11. 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 • history as members of marginalised group • not to lead to hierarchies of oppression • create solidarity not barriers of difference COMMONALITY more than DIFFERENCE

12. Study power across levels of analysis • Unit of analysis systemic, even if unit of data collection is particular slice, group, person, event or part of whole. • Including persons who benefit from social arrangements or merely ‘watch’. • Task to theorize across levels, interrogate movement of power across levels, social relations . ‘no unit too small to see fingerprint of the world’

13. Dialogue and Imagination Dialogical practice • which transforms situated experience into situated knowledge Imagination • To produce other types of knowledge that are valuable

14. 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

15. 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’

16. Where to start ? • Unbearable oppression • A tomato

17. Inspiring aspirations • 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

18. illustrative cases • Opportunity Gap Research Project- urban and suburban youths’ experiences of racial & class justice & injustice in their New York City schools (Fineet al, 2005) • College-in-prison programme for women in a maximum security prison, New York (Fine and Torre, 2006) • Youth-focused initiatives in Dadaab Refugee Camps of NE Province, Kenya ( Cooper, 2005)

19. Methods and processes Opportunity 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

20. Full compositional analysis First fracturing analysis Contrastive/counter analysis Local excavation Policy in practice analysis Liberating Analysis

21. On the tomato trail • Freirean generative themes • Existential experiences of the everyday • Complex structural conditions of globalisation

22. 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?

23. 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

25. 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

26. Conclusion • Recognise that academy is one of few remaining places in which dissent is possible • 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