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Exploring Vibrant Matter in Community-Based Participatory Research

Fri, April 28, 2:15 to 3:45pm, Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Floor: Meeting Room Level, Room 214 C

Abstract

Panelist 2 shares data (photographs, videos, artifacts, objects) from an afterschool community center located in a multilingual, working-class community where children have much say about what they do and how they do it. Thinking with theory as method this presenter uses the theoretical concepts of animacies (Chen, 2012) and vibrant matter (Bennett, 2010) to draw out the often over-looked liveliness and agency of the nonhuman or “basely material” (Chen, 2011) of space and objects as co-producing everyday literacies at the community center with children.

All three panelists draw upon post-qualitative ways of inquiring. Post-qualitative scholars question the taken for granted, normative assumptions (and ways of doing) qualitative inquiry. These scholars push forward with innovative, rigorous methodologies and methods of qualitative research that embrace theory and methods as entangled (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; St. Pierre, 2011). Distinct from applied theory approaches, examining material intra-actions and performances in texts requires analytic lenses that recognize data as actors themselves (Barad, 2007). Analysis can therefore be described as “thinking with data, theory, and research questions”, not acting upon data to interpret or determine findings (Hultman & Lenz-Taguchi, 2010; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; Leander & Rowe, 2006). This approach to analysis engages panelists’ own encounter with the data (what it provokes and what each understands) and can be characterized as a dialogue among data sources such as previous research analyses, their understanding and experiences of writing research and teaching, the research questions related to material processes and products, relevant research history, theory, and the data produced.

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