Nothing about Us without Us: Solidarity Research With Marginalized Groups

• In Event: 4154 - Qualitative Methodology

Abstract

Drawing from my experience conducting an ethnographic study with currently and formerly homeless people in the sex trade, I put forth recommendations for ethical, policy-relevant research with groups of people who experience routine, normalized violence, and who are frequently silenced and misrepresented by academics and policy makers. This article analyzes protests against what activists perceive as oppressive knowledge production by “outsiders” who are not sex workers or homeless. These protest events against research “about us without us” occurred between 2012-2015, and targeted popular academic “experts,” Melissa Farley and George Kelling as well as policy advocates. The protestors questioned the rights of outsiders to produce knowledge about homeless people and sex workers and denounced the ways in which outsider academic voices are legitimized over those of the people who are directly affected by the policies. By taping their mouths shut, holding anti-broken windows “poverty scholar” conferences and hosting debates with the authors of anti-trafficking legislation, poor people and those involved in sex work and street economies assert their voices about decisions that affect their daily lives. This article draws lessons from marginalized groups’ protests against knowledge production by outsider “experts” to present three problems with traditional poverty research: Pathologization, paternalism and extractive exotification. I use my observations of protests to develop guidelines for solidarity research, a knowledge production practice that prioritizes the needs and perspectives of marginalized communities.

Author

• Dilara Yarbrough, San Francisco State University