Solidarity, Power Asymmetry, and Collective Action: What Can Transnational Feminism Bring to Participatory Action Research?

• In Event: 63.063 - Critical Examination of Emerging Tensions in Youth Participatory Action Research and Building Liberatory Praxes

Abstract

While this paper does not seek to contest the existence of power asymmetry and the tensions and contradictions that result from them, I argue that utilizing transnational feminist (Chowdhury, 2009; Desai, 2002; Thayer, 2010) lens to analyze these hurdles can provide a shift in the conversation. Methodologically, transnational feminism and CPAR are not often used together, however, the transnational feminist definition of solidarity can add an important layer to the conversation of power asymmetry, reflexivity, positionality, and collaboration within research collectives in CPAR.
Within the transnational feminist framework, solidarity is understood as something being built not around similarities, but around the strength created through the recognition of difference (Desai, 2002, Mohanty, 2003). Understood in this manner, solidarity becomes a praxis that creates “lasting social and political change through the practice of female friendship between women of differential gender positionality” (Chowdhury, 2016 p.161). Although the change may seem insignificant, the result of shifting the way solidarity is understood within a CPAR project also shifts the way power asymmetry is conceptualized. Through this lens, power and privilege are openly acknowledged and recognized, but also put at the service of the collective towards social justice. That is, how can my positionality as an adult, a graduate student, and as an afterschool instructor be used by the collective to support our joint social justice goals?
This paper utilizes data from Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) project developed during the 2016-2017 academic year which sought to understand the ways in which Islamophobia materializes in the everyday experiences of young Muslim women who veil in a majority white high school in Salt Lake City, UT. Our research collective, Al Ahad (in Arabic, indivisible and used in the Qur’an as one of the 99 names of God) utilized interview and questionnaire data to explore the perceptions of Muslim women among their peers and teachers and develop a community art project which sought to dispel stereotypes surrounding the hijab in Western societies.
Al Ahad was formed by six women from five different countries, different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and different age groups (three members of the group were high school juniors, two were sophomores, and one was a Doctoral candidate). This presentation focuses on the theoretical underpinnings that guided the project and seeks to add to the extensive conversation surrounding power asymmetry, positionality and reflexivity in the CPAR literature (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Hawkins, 2007; Hawkins, 2015; Stoudt, Fox, & Fine, 2012; Williams, 2007) by arguing for the value of utilizing a transnational feminist approach to the framing of CPAR projects.

Author

• Ana Carolina Fernandes de Bessa Antunes, University of Utah