The Ethical Dimensions of Knowledge Formation in Theorizing Collaborative, Community-Engaged Research

• In Event: 60.059 - Ethical and Epistemic Intersections in Collaborative Community-Based Research: Challenges for Field Building

Abstract

The Ethical Dimensions of Knowledge Formation in Theorizing Collaborative, Community-Engaged Research

Introduction and Objectives
Collaborative, community-engaged approaches to research are distinctive methods of scholarship that intend to produce knowledge relevant and responsive to the very contexts they are grounded in. The knowledge produced from research, as well as the research process itself, is conceptualized as a tool to inform community organizing and activism, rather than solely an extractable product to advance the archive of the academy. As such, collaborative research might be understood as a coalitional approach to knowledge formation that upholds ethical commitments to social justice, both in terms of the content of the research (or objects of study) as well as the research praxis itself.

However, the mere inclusion of individuals, groups, and communities who, historically and contemporarily, are impacted by structures of oppression, does not in and of itself absolve the research process of the complex ethical dilemmas emerging from this or other methods of social science research (Tuck & Guishard, 2013). Calls for more civically-engaged universities (e.g. Kellogg Commission, 2001; Saltmarsh & Hartley, 2011) and recent initiatives towards field building (CCREC, URBAN, Imagining America) position collaborative, community-engaged research to gain institutional support and legitimacy, yet this institutionalization also poses significant risks to the ethical demands and radical possibilities of this mode of research.

Methods/Data
This paper is situated at the nexus of theory and praxis. I discuss the implicit and explicit ethical dimensions of knowledge formations, drawing lessons from the development of women’s and gender studies (Brown, 1997) and other inclusionary projects of institutionalization (Ahmed, 2012), and situate my analysis within theoretical conversations around the political stakes of knowledge formations. I argue that decolonial methodological approaches reveal the impossibility of cleanly separating ethical and epistemic dimensions of collaborative, community-engaged research, and that such an understanding makes the institutionalization of this form of scholarship particularly fraught.

Theoretical Framework
Feminist scholars have long engaged in questions of knowledge production that challenge traditional scientific notions of objectivity, and naming the critical stakes of seriously engaging with and from knowledges that emerge from marginalized subjectivities (Anzaldúa, 1987; Lugones, 2003). As Fricker (2007) describes, testimonial and hermeneutical forms of injustice bear real social and political consequences and demonstrate the significance of epistemic practices for struggles for justice.

I thus situate the practice of collaborative, community-engaged research as one possible mode of intervention by structurally marginalized communities into those very structures of domination. The ethical and political dimensions of knowledge formation are further heightened, I argue, within the context of field building.

Significance
My analysis raises questions regarding the complex dilemmas that arise from practicing collaborative community-engaged research within the academy, and provides a cautionary note about the contradictions inherent in this field building work.

Author

• Sheeva Sabati, University of California - Santa Cruz