Beginning With Me: Accounting for Our Counterstories in Socially Just Qualitative Design

• In Event: Gutter Rainbows and Concrete Roses: Utilizing Community Cultural Wealth to Find Beauty in the Hideous

Abstract

To avoid simplification in socially just qualitative research (Koro-Ljungberg, 2010) a methodological process must exist that contextualizes the decisions made in the design itself. Employing Tara Yosso and David Garcia’s (2007) theory of culture of wealth, specifically resistant capital, and counterstorytelling (Solórzano and Yosso, 2002) as overarching theoretical frameworks, I examine how reducing qualitative research to mere systematic implementation of simple designs void of how personal contextualization informs that design, thus misses an opportunity for complexity. Since counterstorytelling reveals a nuanced understanding of racism it becomes more than data to analyze (Solórzano and Yosso, 2002). It becomes an applicable tool that informs research design because embedded in counterstories of researchers of color, specifically, is resistant capital (Yosso, 2007). This knowledge-based capital then becomes the foundation for which fuels the research agendas and identities of researchers of color. And because research agendas and identities must be critically interrogated in qualitative research (Best, 2003, Denzin & Giardina, 2010, Denzin & Lincoln, 1994, Wagle & Cantaffa, 2008) then so to the counterstories that inform that identity.

Just as Renato Rosaldo (1989) argues that his analysis of the Filipino Ilongot tribe’s headhunting practice was remised without applying personal contextualization of his wife’s death, I argue so is qualitative research void of the personal contextualization that led to the design itself. Hence, the meaning making of qualitative research does not merely resonate in its findings or method of data collection. Rather, it begins in mere decisions used to design the project. Extracting the process that led to the fruition of the project design, therefore, limits qualitative research altogether and discredits resistant capital embedded in counterstories of researchers of color.

This paper problematizes dominant perspectives of qualitative inquiry by proposing a methodological process that operationalizes counterstorytelling in the decision-making process of qualitative research design. The paper begins with a cautionary critical race critique of qualitative research void of personal contextualization of design decisions, then demonstrates how researchers of color who engage their counterstories as informants to socially just designs shed light on their resistant capital. Although some personal distance in needed in qualitative research, I posit strict adherence to such premise ultimately assumes White hegemonic designs (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008) as sound while marginalizing designs brought forth by the contextualization of researchers of color.

I then offer a metacognitive example of how I inventoried my counterstories as a researcher of color and correlated design decisions to those counterstories to make methodological decisions in my qualitative research design. I examine 1) counterstories of how I was racialized as a Filipina American, 2) the racialization of my Black and Brown students in both Los Angeles and New York City and 3) how those experiences informed my qualitative design decisions, which ultimately enriched the data source. The paper enacts a step-by step process of how I operationalized my counterstories entrenched in resistant capital to inform my research design and how doing so, better complexifies the socially just quality so demanded of qualitative research (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994).

Author

• Cheryl E. Matias, University of Colorado - Denver