Co-Authorship, Authentic Scholarly Relationships, and the Need to Resist Academic Individualism

• In Event: Perspectives, Processes, and Possibilities: Reimagining Co-Authorship for Relational and Anticolonial Futures in Social Studies Scholarship

Abstract

Purpose

This presentation examines ways we have failed/succeeded in pushing ourselves and the field of social studies education to name, unpack, and transform our co-authorship theories and methodologies. We address several questions:
● In social studies educational scholarship, who does the thinking? Who does the writing?
● What have our observations and experiences been in understanding how conventions of social studies education support/hinder relational perspectives?
● How do we—scholars working within and across social studies education and anti-colonial frameworks—understand “co-authorship?”
● What practices/processes support building authentic relationships within and beyond “academic” scholarship?

Perspectives

Anti-relational, settler colonial mindsets are embedded within our profession. Academia has deep roots in the colonial project—insisting on individual accomplishment/success at the expense of Indigenous and other minoritized communities (Smith, 2012; Tuck & Guishard, 2013). The assumption is that scholars have an innate right to engage in whatever research they want without building lasting relationships, without asking permission, and/or without considering the lasting impact of that research on those they “study.” Academic scholarship—especially social studies scholarship—claims ideas and practices of observing, analyzing, and representing social experiences from perceived neutral distances, despite the impossibility of such neutrality (e.g., Authors, 2019, 2023; Byrd, 2011; Smith, 1999). As Tuck and Yang (2014) explain:

"The origins of many social science disciplines in maintaining logics of domination … are regularly thought to be just errant or inauspicious beginnings…. [S]ettler colonialism … make[s] itself invisible, natural, without origin (and without end), and inevitable. We are struck by the pervasive silence on questions regarding the contemporary rationale(s) for social science research. Though a variety of ethical and procedural protocols require researchers to compose statements regarding the objectives or purposes of a particular project, such protocols do not prompt reflection upon the underlying beliefs about knowledge and change that too often go unexplored or unacknowledged." (pp. 228-229)

Explicit resistance to academia’s settler colonial obsession with individualism and violent gaze of/upon the “other” is paramount to a relational perspective. Our methodological choices—including those surrounding co-authorship—define whether our research replicates or challenges settler colonialism.

Mode of Inquiry/Results

Building from recent scholarship explicating possibilities and challenges for researchers seeking to support Indigenous communities (Authors, 2021, 2023, forthcoming) and through collaborative inquiry, we offer and discuss examples of practices/processes that supported reciprocal relationships and relational co-authorship. We also explore ways relational approaches necessarily draw upon expertise of “others” (e.g., teacher educators, parents, community members).

Significance

To challenge settler colonialism within social studies, we must commit to digging deep, laying bare the fallacies of our field, and changing our actions. Understanding settler colonial theory and engaging with lived Indigenous theories helps us unlearn harmful ways of seeing, hearing, knowing, and being with(in) the world that constrain the ethical relationality of social studies education and research. As Krawec (2022) reflected, “We need a reconfigured relationship, one that is reciprocal and recognizes the limits and hubris of ownership, the limits of a colonial way of living that destroys in order to replace” (p. 139).

Authors

• Sarah B. Shear, University of Washington - Bothell

• Jenni Conrad, Oregon State University