Resistance or (Re)Producing Oppression? Ethics, Spirituality, and Positionality in Research Focused on Social Change and Transformations

• In Event: 2166 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 9: Race & Religion

Abstract

Scholars interested in social change and transformation often use interpretive methods—particularly textual analysis—to discover how systemic oppressions are (re)produced in hopes of producing a “better” future. A focus on meaning-making, thus, dominates studies on race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. In this case study, I show that being committed to conducting ethical research focused on social change and transformation also entails reflecting on how one “sees and acts in the world.” I show my journey as a researcher from graduate school to the present, through demonstrating how my methodology and methods professors’ insistence on reflecting on our interpretive paradigms and relationship to that which is researched—intersected with my spirituality—strengthened and honed my skills as a scholar/researcher. Ethical concerns towards the communities I study—as well as my commitment to producing sound scholarship in this Age of Alternative Facts—necessarily, impacts every single stage of my research journey. The aim of this case study is to give a personal account of my development as a scholar/researcher through describing the development of one interpretive research project focused on social change and transformation, in hopes that aspiring scholar/researchers will, also, see the benefit of taking the time to learn how they see and act in the world. I hope this will help us all become more aware of the potential impacts of our research, from the point of designing through the dissemination of our research.

Author

• Emily Noelle Sanchez Ignacio, University of Washington, Tacoma