Critical and Postcritical Ethnography: Turns Toward Families in Community-Based Work

• In Event: Reflections on Practices in the "Field": Lessons in Creative, Critical, Postcritical, and Community Research

Abstract

In this paper, the co-authors introduce the histories of critical and postcritical ethnography and represent specific methodological turns they took in a 4-year community based ethnography they engaged in with families with refugee status in southern Appalachia. In this new generation of critical and postcritical ethnography (Authors, 2015, 2024; Noblit, Flores, and Murillo, 2004; Panos 2021), researchers have taken the critiques of critical ethnography to heart and applied them to their own work. This turning critique back on the practice and process of ethnography has produced unique methodological and theoretical combinations.
The authors detail how postcritical ethnography provided ways to understand some of the complexity of Burundian experiences. The orientation to postcritical ethnography made such decisions possible and ultimately led to the creation of data for Burundian families rather than data about them.
Earliest engagements included meetings with people from whom the research team wanted to learn how resettlement was going. The legibility of their roles in relationship to resettlement made these starting places clear (regional affiliate that administered resettlement, co-sponsors who assisted with resettlement, county school administrators). The interdisciplinary research team shared commitments to emic approaches in our work. The resettlement challenged the receiving community on many levels. Community resistance was present, and there was even an effort spearheaded by educators in Riverhill (pseudonym) to shut down the resettlement agency. The Burundians, for their part, were clear about what they needed and were not receiving. They were clamoring for English language classes for children and adults, for tutoring for their children, for access to the nearby community college and better jobs.
The research team did collect reams of data: focus group interviews with many Burundians, individual interviews with teachers, administrators, community co-sponsors, and service providers; observations in schools, classrooms, support team meetings, and school and community events. Yet the authors were concerned over social justice and equity. The schools and the regional affiliate were under-resourced. Inequities were affecting teachers and Burundian children and families. Everyone needed additional resources.
We worked with the affiliate on an asset assessment and created English tutoring opportunities for children and adults alike, tutored ourselves and volunteered in one Title I elementary school. Many children began to be tested for qualification in special education. Resettlement efforts unsettled the families, and many wished to return ‘home.’ The authors met with families in a series of family meetings to develop a community forum with information the families shared they needed. Recorded in Kirundi with English subtitles (for the authors) we addressed the histories of schooling in the U.S., the role of school counselors, district psychologists and special education, special education law and parental / guardian rights.
The presentation details both these events of the community based work and the postcritical methodology that guided us. We advance that postcritical orientations to research keep critique centered on our own positions as researchers as well as inequities in the world—providing at times a much needed compass.

Authors

• Allison Daniel Anders, University of South Carolina

• Jessica Nina Lester, Indiana University