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Fostering Social Justice through Qualitative Inquiry
A Methodological Guide
Corey W. Johnson, Diana C. Parry, Corey W. Johnson, Diana C. Parry
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eBook - ePub
Fostering Social Justice through Qualitative Inquiry
A Methodological Guide
Corey W. Johnson, Diana C. Parry, Corey W. Johnson, Diana C. Parry
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About This Book
Contributor spotlight interviews:
Dr Kim Lopez: https://youtu.be/vEF71NM_jQc
Dr Jocelyn Scott: https://youtu.be/qfjcbgExEJ0
Dr Brian Kumm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kchW0MDfw44&t=158s,
Dr Luc Cousineau: https://youtu.be/IjRvRw3WjgY
Now in its second edition, Fostering Social Justice through Qualitative Inquiry, addresses the methods of conducting qualitative research using a social justice paradigm. Qualitative researchers increasingly flock to social justice research to move beyond academic discourse and aid marginalized, oppressed, or less-powerful communities and groups.
The book addresses the differences that a social justice stance requires from the researcher, then discusses how major theories and qualitative methodologies are employed to create social justice in both the process and products of qualitative research. Snapshot theory chapters introduce the foundations of theories like feminism, critical race theory, queer theory, and many more. Robust methodological chapters cover grounded theory, phenomenology, ethnography, participatory action research, and other key qualitative designs. Chapters are written by experts in the specific theory or methodology, and exemplars of the authors work illustrate this style of research in action.
New to this edition:
• Expanded attention to the theories most commonly associated with social justice research by authors who have put it to use
• Methodological chapters on autoethnography, collective memory work, digital methods and postqualitative inquiry
• Chapter Reflection Questions to help students and their supervisors/instructors apply what they've learned
• Recommended readings from each author with annotations to encourage additional exploration
This established textbook will be suitable for graduate students and scholars in qualitative inquiry in a range of disciplines, including Education and Gender and Sexuality, Communication, Leisure Studies, and across the social sciences.
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1 Contextualizing Qualitative Research for Social Justice
Corey W. Johnson and Diana C. Parry
DOI: 10.4324/9781003216575-1
Most of us come to a social justice paradigm because we have experienced injustice in our own lives and want to do something about it. For example, Diana was drawn to feminism as a result of the patriarchy she encountered in daily life as a woman. Meanwhile, Corey’s attraction to social justice was grounded in the distinct differences he felt moving through the social world as a gay man and the stereotypes and homophobia that existed around whom he could love. Regardless of how one comes to the work of social justice, there is much work still to be done. As Martin Luther King Jr. (1963) stated, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Many people think we have tackled the major social identity issues of injustice and solved these social ills. However, this “color-blind” approach to viewing the world is problematic. We bet you can look at your own classroom and/or campus and easily identify issues needing attention from social justice activists. In fact, as we revised this edition, active white supremacy was happening in a school in Rome, Georgia. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. did in his day, Black students and their allies took to the streets. Yahoo news reported:
A group of Black students in Rome, Georgia, are alleging racial discrimination after several of them were suspended for planning a protest while their white counterparts were allowed to wave a Confederate flag on campus with no consequences.(Adams, 2021)
Four white students at Coosa High School waved a Confederate flag and reportedly hurled racial slurs during a “farm day”-themed school spirit week leading up to homecoming. The white students faced no repercussions and their Black counterparts planned a protest to bring awareness to the situation. However, before the protest even happened, several Black students were suspended.
Of course, injustice is not always quite as blatent. According to the National Crime Information Center, there were close to 6,000 Indigenous women missing or murdered, with the government only investigating 116 of them (Native Hope, 2021). Unfortunately, these examples are just two of the many headlines of injustice that fills our news outlets, and social media. Inequities and discrimination such as classism, racism, sexism, ageism, transphobia, and heterosexism create major social problems. To address such social problems, Paisley and Dustin (2010) argue that we need to “stop ‘othering,’ treating people who are at the margins… as if they [are] somehow inferior to us…. It is time to adopt a more caring and connected attitude toward the world around us” (p. v). Caring and connection are at the heart of a social justice research paradigm that aims to make the world a better place by enacting social change for marginalized and/or oppressed groups. Charmaz (2011) explains that social justice inquiry “attends to inequities and equality, barriers and access, poverty and privilege, individual rights and the collective good, and their implications for suffering” (p. 359). To achieve this aim, the processes and outcomes of scholarship must move beyond academic discourse to benefit communities or groups that are treated unfairly in the social world (Angrosino & Rosenberg, 2011; Lincoln, Lynham, & Guba, 2011). A social justice paradigm, therefore, is a moral, ethical, and political task that challenges traditional notions of universal truth, scientific neutrality, and researcher dispassion (Parry, Johnson, & Stewart, 2013).
One of the underlying themes related to social justice inquiry is that the world is capable of being changed; that change can come from any direction, and especially from the bottom up. A social justice paradigm literally changes the way one thinks and views the world. Such a paradigm means that we are all capable of—and therefore responsible for—changing the world. Given this shared responsibility, it helps if the processes and outcomes of social justice research are made visible. With this goal in mind, the purpose of this textbook is fourfold: (1) to explain how using a social justice paradigm orients qualitative inquiry as a socially relevant, socially responsible, multidisciplinary, globally sensitive endeavor; (2) to document common features of social justice—oriented qualitative inquiry; (3) to detail and exemplify research methodologies frequently used in qualitative inquiry aimed to enact social justice; and finally (4) to create a proliferation of theories for social justice that speak to multiple and diverse global contexts.
The Evolution of Social Justice Research
There must exist a paradigm, a practical model for social change that includes an understanding of ways to transform consciousness that are linked to efforts to transform structures.(bell hooks, 1995)
Two decades ago, only a handful of scholars were explicitly concerned with connecting their research outcomes with issues of social justice (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). These scholars conceptualized social justice as
the ability of social science to be put to policy objectives with the purpose of redressing a variety of historically reified oppressions in modern life: racism, economic injustice, the ‘hidden injuries of class,’ discrimination in the legal system, gender inequities, and the new oppressions resulting from the restructuring of the social welfare system.(Denzin & Lincoln, 2011, p. 715)
Since then, a large array of scholars have taken up issues of social justice in both the process and products of their research. These scholars premise social justice on an epistemology that values emotions, personal relationships, an ethic of care, political praxis, and multivocality to purposefully reveal inequities in all facets of society (Charmaz, 2011; Denzin & Lincoln, 2011).
Epistemology questions what is the nature of knowledge? How do we come to know what we know? It will influence the way we think about what is Truth, truths, and/or the production of knowledge.
Today, scholars working within a social justice paradigm cover a wide range of topic areas including environmental issues, critical medical studies, critical management studies, animal rights, and a large field of literature on a broad range of topics connected to activist movements both contemporary and historic. This broad scope of social justice research is reflected in academic journals devoted to the topic (e.g., Social Justice Research, Studies in Social Justice) and in research centers (e.g., Southern Poverty Law Center, Canadian Centre for Social Justice) in various institutions across the globe.
Given that the purpose of this book is to outline social justice research methodologies, we will not address the historical evolution in great depth or detail. We are sensitive to the complexity that might be left out of the following overview, but would encourage you to follow up on the deep philosophical and historic roots of social justice offered through some of the readings cited throughout the text. We also acknowledge that social justice is very much a Western ideal, and that other philosophies exist to promote peace and tranquillity.
However, our specific focus on social justice is inextricably linked to the shift toward a more critical approach to interpretation and representation of research (Denzin & Giardina, 2009). Indeed, the epistemological underpinnings of social justice have evolved through a variety of philosophical paradigms. According to Denzin and Lincoln (2011), the “narratives or stories scientists tell are accounts couched and framed within specific storytelling traditions, often defined as paradigms (e.g., positivism, postpositivism…)” (p. 6). To contextualize the social justice research paradigm used throughout this text, we turn next to the evolution of social justice that has informed current day understandings. Here we trace the history of social justice research, including positivism into (post)positivism, and then discuss the interpretive turn.
What Is (Post)Positivism?
Positivists believe by obtaining pure, truthful observations, they are able to offer causal explanations for social behavior and law-like generalizations (Schwandt, 2001). The purposes of research, from a positivist perspective, are for both prediction and control (Lincoln, Lynham, & Guba, 2011). From an ontological perspective, positivists believe in a single, identifiable reality wherein there is a truth to be measured and reported (Lincoln, Lynham, & Guba, 2011).
Ontology deals with the nature of reality; the study of reality and what constitutes the world (Schwandt, 2007). What does it mean to be?
Positivism, Crotty (2003) explained, “postulates the objective existence of meaningful reality. It considers such meaningful reality to be value-neutral, ahistorical, and cross-cultural. It believes that, if one goes about it in the right way, one can identify such reality with certitude” (p. 40). In short, through the use of proper methods, positivists “discover truths” about which they have supreme confidence because of their belief that knowledge is accurate and certain.
Philosophers and social scientists have critiqued the assumptions and claims of positivism since its inception (Crotty, 2003; Phillips & Burbules, 2000). Without completely abandoning the need for objectivism, the critiques centered on degrees of objectivity, precision, and certitude, calling for more modest research claims or a “less arrogant form of positivism” (Crotty, 2003, p. 29). This more modest, less arrogant form of positivism is what we know as postpositivism. There is no singular unified approach to postpositivism, and there are many issues upon which postpositivists disagree (Phillips & Burbules, 2000). However, the one issue that postpositivists seem to agree upon is that knowledge is conjectural; human knowledge is not based on rock-solid foundations, but is challengeable and can change in light of new or further investigation (Phillips & Burbules, 2000). Postpositivists “admit that, no matter how faithfully the scientist adheres to scientific method, research outcomes are neither totally objective nor unquestionably certain” (Crotty, 2003, p. 40). As a result, methodologically, the best way to gather or seek out new knowledge is through a hypothetical deductive method (hypothesize, deduce, and generalize) (Guba & Lincoln, 2005); researchers aim for objectivity to ensure the results are not unduly influenced and can be used to generalize to the larger population. Throughout this process, the goal is for the researcher to remain distant from research subjects (intentional use of the word) and processes (Crotty, 2003). In short, the goal of postpositivist research is to generate knowledge that helps better understand reality and generalize that reality to othe...