PAPER: Bridging Theory and Practice: Using Reflexive Cycles in Feminist Participatory Action Research

Bridging Theory and Practice: Using Reflexive Cycles in Feminist Participatory Action Research

REFERENCE: (FPAR)

Williams, J., & Lykes, M. B. (2003). Bridging theory and practice: Using reflexive cycles in feminist participatory action research. Feminism & Psychology, 13(3), 287-294.

JOURNAL

Date of summary :12 DESEMBER 2017

MY SUMMARY

I learned how Joan and Brinton emphasized the importance of reflexive cycles in Feminist Participatory Action Research during their research with 20 Mayan Ixil women in remote Guatemalan Highland town of Chajul. They learnt with the participants’ challenges during applying Photovoice, like obstacles taking pictures in their community, husband’s power on women to join their research, and other obstacles

Some sentences contain their reflection includes……….;

I often questioned my hesitancy to break their ‘cultural silence’ about..........

My ‘lessons learned’ included a deepening appreciation for..........

We (Brinton and Joan) brought our scholarly training as psychologists, including our knowledge of feminist-based theory, research, and culturally sensitive practices, our passion for, and commitment to............

We could not have accomplished without a great deal of humility, patience, and reflexive dialogue between ourselves and ..............

The reenactments and reflexive conversations allowed us to.......; The knowledge generated through these processes......; Vital to our ‘successes’ was.......;Through collaborative field research and creative workshops we identified......

12 December, 2017, Najmah

IMPORTANT DIRECT QUOTATION

Seeking to accompany those directly affected by socio-political turmoil, many academically trained researchers working in these areas have embraced feminist principles that strive to facilitate processes of empowerment and social action that challenge traditional hierarchies of exclusion. One strategy to achieve these goals is participatory action research (PAR), wherein local community members become active agents in analyzing and redressing the effects of oppression and violence within the community (Park et al., 1993). While finding feminist principles and PAR methodologies theoretically sound, those of us who have struggled with implementing field research that engenders social justice and empowerment understand at first hand the numerous challenges attendant to these processes. P.287

Example of reflection:

I often questioned my hesitancy to break their ‘cultural silence’ about, for example, domestic violence and war rape, oscillating between self-criticism for my colluding in their silence and self- congratulation for my cultural sensitivity and refusal to impose a western feminist agenda. Living through such contradictions deepened my understanding of local rural women’s lives and my recognition of the limitations of theories that positioned western feminism over Maya Ixil traditionalist views. This was brought home poignantly when some of the evangelical and Catholic women within ADMI disagreed vehemently about Juana’s (not her real name) decision to leave her home in response to her husband’s beatings. I had not been in Chajul when this conflict erupted and listened carefully as women from both sub-groups explained how they had managed this conflict and Juana’s subsequent departure from the Association. My ‘lessons learned’ included a deepening appreciation for diversity within apparent homogeneity, a recognition of the layers of violence within a community struggling to move beyond war, and of the waxing and waning of change processes. Similar lessons about violence and gender, repeated throughout our PAR project, are described below. P.288-289

PhotoVoice brought together 22 women whose diverse historical, cultural, linguistic, and socio-political backgrounds constituted a rich pool of knowledge and skill variability. Our Mayan colleagues were between 16 and 65 years old and brought expertise from the domains of Mayan culture, history, and language, as well as experiential knowledge as Mayan woman in a war-stricken, oppressive, impoverished, society. They also brought their willingness to share these experi-ences in search of solutions to current pressing economic and social needs. We (Brinton and Joan) brought our scholarly training as psychologists, including our knowledge of feminist-based theory, research, and culturally sensitive practices, our passion for, and commitment to, social justice and empowerment for traditionally oppressed groups, our differing and developing knowledge of Guatemala, and our own cultural and socio-political worldviews. Our experiential knowledge included having traveled, lived, and worked among oppressed groups in various countries. P.289

Despite these resources, and a shared commitment to social justice, engendering the principles of PAR via PhotoVoice was an ongoing challenge that we could not have accomplished without a great deal of humility, patience, and reflexive dialogue between ourselves and with our Mayan colleagues.

Through collaborative field research and creative workshops we identified community priorities, gathered information, analyzed data, and developed action plans, moving roughly forward. Vital to our ‘successes’ was our active engagement in an iterative process of critical reflection, action, and further reflection. A commitment to that process also enabled us to learn from our ‘failures’. Below we discuss an example of each. P.2901 

ADDRESSING CHALLENGES THROUGH REFLEXIVE ACTION

Many of us (Joan, Brinton and Mayan participants) were disheartened when we reconvened the following month and only a few women had even attempted to take photos. We asked ourselves, ‘How could our initial enthusiasm have resulted in such modest productivity? What happened?

In addition, the reenactments and reflexive conversations allowed us to invite the women to discuss gender relations, Mayan traditions, and community interactions that we had failed to understand, offering insights into the women’s life-worlds and struggles that had been previously inaccessible to us given our different worldviews and cultural perspectives. The insights gained from the above process facilitated our ability to participate more actively alongside the women in the PhotoVoice project. P.290

The knowledge generated through these processes became resources for retheorizing gender, trauma, and its wake. For example, in the redramatizations described above, the group recognized that their picture-taking signified that they were stepping outside tightly circumscribed gender roles – roles traditionally governed by patriarchal structures (Lykes, 2001; Williams, 2001). In addition, by taking photos and interviewing those whose pictures they were taking, they were ‘giving voice’ to numerous atrocities incurred during the violence. This act broke an entrenched community code of silence (see, for example, Lykes, 1994) that had been tightly enforced during the war and continued to pervade many familial and community interactions. An activity (photography) that originally had seemed like ‘fun’, or a ‘simple task’, took on new significance. Over time the women developed the self-confidence and interpersonal skills required to take on this new public role, as well as resources for confronting local villagers’ stereo- types and gender prejudices. The action of taking pictures and the reflexive dramatic play in the participatory workshops constituted a dialectic of praxis and a supportive site of emotional containment. P.291

When they failed to show up for the second workshop, conversations with them suggested they could not overcome their husbands’ resistances concerning their absenteeism from home. I (Joan) suggested that we invite the men to a workshop (which I thought was an efficient, effective, and respectful gesture). The women were silent – an indication that this was not an acceptable means of negotiating with husbands. P.291

Thus, our efforts to realign gender relations, albeit in a small way, required action at multiple levels and with multiple participants. The PAR processes helped us to identify and record these change strategies and document respective contributions to achiev- ing them. P.291-292

Despite the women’s deployment of newly acquired negotiating skills, and our support through regular conversations with husbands about our work, some men staunchly opposed their wives’ participation in community activities. For example, one of the few literate PhotoVoice members, Maria (not her real name), was an outspoken supporter of equity and women’s rights. Her husband sought to control her activities through the use of physical abuse and threats to take away the children if she chose to remain in ADMI and PhotoVoice. His erratic and violent behavior during frequent drinking bouts made it almost impossible for Maria to leave home for fear he would hurt the children or destroy their property. In one of his drunken rages he disrupted an ADMI meeting, forcing her to return home. His friendship with political leaders in the town further limited our group’s efforts to support her and her children. We (Brinton and Joan) reluctantly acknowledged the limits of change when there is an absence of alternative struc- tural supports for someone seeking to challenge gender violence. We felt forced to acknowledge the group’s decision to accept Maria’s absence from our midst. P.292

CONCLUSIONS

We (Brinton, Joan, and our Mayan colleagues) met the numerous challenges of PhotoVoice – some foreseen, others unexpected, and several described herein – through personal commitment and collaboration in the context of participatory processes informed by feminist methodology and creativity. Self-knowledge, empowerment, role transformation, and social development were realized through PhotoVoice, one of many stages in the women of ADMI’s individual and collective processes of healing and reconstruction. The engendered action-reflection processes described above were critical, both for the women’s development of themselves and their community, and for our ability to accompany them in supportive ways in their research and action. In addition, the documentation and our critical reflections of the project shifted our theorizing concerning violence and its impact on a group of women, social change, and the interface between culture and psychology (see Lykes, 2001; Williams, 2001). The strengths and limitations of feminist PAR praxis enabled us to accompany a small group of rural Mayan women in their daily struggles and to deepen our endeavors as academics to build an inclusive theory about war and community rebuilding processes that more adequately and accurately reflect the lived experiences of women and children.