Postcritical Reflections: Orienting to Trustworthiness through Partiality and Place (Poster 1)

• In Event: Manufacturing Trustworthiness in Qualitative Research

Abstract

In this poster presentation, I examine and critique representations of trustworthiness across two longitudinal postcritical ethnographies taking place from 2011-2018 in the Midwestern US. Postcritical ethnography “provides a way to study power in everyday experiences, to imagine equitable practices, and to commit to a way of doing ethnographic work that includes not only a critique of power, but also a critique of self, interpretation, and representation” (Anders, 2012). The studies I conducted prioritized spatial theorizing about inequity where place is positioned as practiced with and alongside collaborator-participants (Tuck & McKenzie, 2015). Cresswell (2009) offers this stance “can help us think of place in radically open and non-essentialized ways where place is constantly struggled over and reimagined in practical ways…Place in this sense becomes an event rather than a secure ontological thing”. The imperative of place as practice for both projects meant confronting raced and classed experiences of schooling as inevitably always also about complexities of geographic embodiment and representation (Author, 2021/2022/2023). With postcritical commitments, trustworthiness is often focused on acting through the personal, incomplete, and political nature for researchers engaged in acting upon moral commitments (Noblit et al, 2003). To build trustworthiness with their audiences, ethnographers share their commitments often alongside other dimensions of their positionality and include reflections on their actions with/in their work. For postcritical ethnographers, this typically takes the form of prioritizing transparency, reflexivity, and representation in the doing and production of scholarship (Anders, 2019; Lester & Anders, 2018).

For these projects, I oriented to trustworthiness through the partiality of my own coming to know as researcher alongside the practices of place I was exploring with collaborator-participants. In this presentation, I revisit nine peer-reviewed journal articles I authored/co-authored focusing on these studies, materials used to share ‘findings’ with collaborator-participants (e.g., PowerPoint presentations, visuals), reviewer feedback/responses, reflective memos, and the dissertation I completed focused on one of the studies. In my review, I consider these artifacts as opportunities to (re)visit and (re)consider how in the doing of postcritical ethnography I sought to produce scholarship as recognizable and legible: trustworthy. I identified when I made explicit/implicit conceptions of trustworthiness, validity, or credibility, examining the language-in-use that mobilized these concepts and reflected on how varying versions positioned the work of transmuting trust for my audiences. In this reflective analysis I found that in the communication and representation of trustworthiness, I repeatedly oriented to what Lester & Anders (2018) call ‘layers' of representation, positionality, and context as partial, but specific, opportunities to practice place as believable postcritical ethnographer. In so doing trustworthiness was positioned as inviting the reader to examine those layers as frictions that position believability and knowability through partiality and a spectrum of (un)recognizability when the specificity of place is given primacy. Ultimately, I offer attendees an opportunity to consider how the act of trustworthiness is also an (in)complete dance with the ethics of practices of place in scholarship that seeks an otherwise (Lester & Anders, 2018).

Author

• Alexandra Panos, University of South Florida