Qualitative Research for Antiracism: A Marxist Perspective

• In Event: Supporting Epistemological Diversity and Widening the Struggle for Justice: New Directions in Critical Qualitative Research

Abstract

Purpose and Theoretical Perspectives
As Kincheloe and McLaren (2005) have put it:
Whereas traditional researchers see their task
as the description, interpretation, or reanimation
of a slice of reality, critical researchers often regard
their work as a first step toward forms of political
action that can redress the injustices found in the
field site or constructed in the very act of research itself
In this paper, the researchers argue that, for Marxists, qualitative research should aim to further knowledge of exploitation and oppression with the primary aim of liberating the exploited and the oppressed.

Methods & Data Sources
The work takes as a case study, ongoing research on women from the Gypsy Roma and Traveller communities in the UK. Having the poorest life chances of any ethnic group, the worst school results, being on the receiving end of racist bullying, and with families hounded from one district to another, discrimination against GRT communities has been described by the Commission for Racial Equality (now subsumed under the Equality and Human Rights Commission) as the last ‘respectable’ form of racism (CRE, 2007).

Results & Significance
The research, which draws on the Marxist concept of racialization (e.g. Miles, 1993), eschews traditional research approaches which are often conducted by agencies of the local or national state, and adopts ‘a life history’ approach (e.g. Goodson, 2005) involving one-to-one interviews by a female feminist researcher, thus revealing hitherto undiscovered data related to the reproduction of racism in the UK.

References
Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) (2007) ‘Gypsies and Travellers: A strategy for the CRE, 2004 – 2007’, London: Commission for Racial Equality.
Goodson, I. (2005) Learning, Curriculum and Life Politics, London: Routledge.

Author

• Mike Cole