Refuse Thy Name? Critical Reflections on the Convention of Masking Place in Rural Educational Research

• In Event: 61.022 - (Un)Masking Ruralities: By Whom and for What?

Abstract

Consistent with their treatment of individual participants, educational researchers regularly use pseudonyms to reference their study sites. The rationales, strategies, and implications of masking place may differ from those for masking people (Nespor, 2000). However, both practices are so pervasive as to have become unexamined defaults (Lahman, Rodriguez, Moses, Griffin, Mendoza, & Yacoub, 2015). Given the unique methodological and ethical (Guenther, 2009; Lange, Zaretsky & Euler, 2016) as well as ontological and political (Stein, 2010) implications of masking place in educational research, a new premise of disclosure and justification is necessary (Jerolmack & Muphy, 2017).
Drawing on ethnographic work I conducted in Garden City, Kansas, this paper explores how studying this place rather than a place like this place matters. Garden City is a remote, small town that experienced rapid growth and racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic transformation as a result of two beefpacking plants opening there in the early 1980s (Author, 2016). The community’s story has interested not only academics but also journalists, writers, advertisers, and others over several decades’ time—all of whom have referenced Garden City by name. The collective representations of this place have been rich and exemplified the phenomenon of “new destination” immigration experienced elsewhere (Massey, 2008).
Alongside Garden City’s distinguished reputation of being a place that welcomes difference, however, a neoliberal analysis of past and present diversity talk (Ahmed, 2012; Bell & Hartmann, 2007) illustrates how the concept of “diversity” is increasingly commodified and treated as a static reality. Key to this process is how many Garden Citians characterize Garden City as being synonymous with diversity itself, so that the existence and educational needs of its newest newcomers goes without further consideration. The opportunity for such an examination over time and across disciplinary representations, textual mediums, and narrators is possible only because of naming rather than masking place.
Masking is not an all or nothing prospect, and whether we mask the settings within which we do our research is a choice. The implications of these choices should be critically engaged to “[highlight] the fissures, insights, challenges, and possibilities of educational research,” as this year’s Division G, Section 6 call urges. Such an exercise is essential for both research that is focused on the social contexts of education and for research that remains relevant and responsive to public concerns in a “post-truth” era.

Author

• Jennifer C. Ng, The University of Kansas