PAPER: Considering more feminist participatory research: What's congruency got to do with it?,Patricia Maguire

Considering More Feminist Participatory Research: What’s Congruency Got to Do With It?

PAPER

Reference:

Maguire, P. (1996). Considering more feminist participatory research: What's congruency got to do with it?. Qualitative Inquiry, 2(1), 106-118.

see her research

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Patricia_Maguire2

My Summary

Interestingly, how Maguire offer a consideration about ‘feminist participatory research’? She said that ‘androcentric’ within PAR research. she also argue that “Feminism allows us to acknowledge shortcomings while redefining success in an increasingly isolating and alienating world.”

She was challenges some questions because “women have unequal access to project participation, then women no doubt have unequal access to any project benefits”

·      How can you share in the supposed empowerment from a PR project that continues your silence and marginalization?

·      Was this potentially and avowedly emancipatory research approach intended only for the male &;oppressed&;?

·      Exactly which systems and structures of oppression would PR attempt to dismantle or replicate?

·      Would men engaged in PR ever seek to dismantle patriarchy? (pp 111)

Then, she offers some consideration about the possibility of feminist participatory research, including:

"First, one of the key features of engaging in any participatory endeavor, research included, is simply time. Given the arguably worldwide sexual division of labor, does participatory research demand something fundamentally different of and from women and men, participants as well as advocates?

Second, just as active and meaningful participation in PR takes time, so too do the building and maintenance of meaningful, reciprocal, and caring relationships take time

Third, among other things, PR is about the redistribution of power. More feminist participatory research might help us to reconceptualize the very notion of power

Fourth, one goal of PR is to mobilize oppressed people to act in their own interests. A more feminist participatory research might help us reframe the organization and community-building components of PR.

Fifth, participatory research often starts with some kind of problem naming or posing How can PR advocates avoid colluding, even unintentionally or for strategic purposes, with oppressive gender relations? How might a more feminist participatory research interface with the many localized actions of women’s groups challenging specific oppressive practices and beliefs deeply rooted in culture and religion? P.116

Sixth, many consciousness-raising and mobilization efforts by and for women have used information produced by traditional social science  Might a more feminist participatory research build bridges between traditional and alternative paradigm research?

Seventh, Stanley and Wise (1990), when analyzing feminist research, called for a concrete account of the process of the research’s production and the social relations that give rise to it. A more feminist participatory research might account more explicitly for the conditions of its own production. How can we make more visible and open to analysis the ways in which participatory research is being produced?

Eighth, PR proposes an extensive, at times overwhelming, agenda and process. A more feminist participatory research might expand the range of endeavors and outcomes we allow ourselves to celebrate. P.116"

She closed her paper with a strong statement “What problems do you see in your lives and communities?; Their answers began someplace else. Almost to a woman, they began by describing and acknowledging the strengths and successes in their lives. In the sharing of successes, however small and micro, we gain courage and encouragement to learn by doing.”

Abstract

The article proposes that there cannot be truly emancipatory participatory research or participatory research advocates without explicit incorporation of feminist perspectives. As part of the larger dialogue regarding taking sides through research, the author asks us to consider a more feminist participatory research. The basis of her argument relatesto issues of ontological congruency. After defining feminism(s), the article briefly identifies the androcentric and incongruous aspects of participatory research. It concludes with specific areas for discussion if we are to consider more feminist participatory research.

Important quotation.

Patricia Maguire Western New Mexico University

The article proposes that there cannot be truly emancipatory participatory research or participatory research advocates without explicit incorporation of feminist perspectives. As part of the larger dialogue regarding taking sides through research, the author asks us to consider a more feminist participatory research. The basis of her argument relates to issues of ontological congruency. After defining feminism(s), the article briefly identifies the androcentric and incongruous aspects of participatory research. It concludes with specific areas for discussion if we are to consider more feminist participatory research.

I do not presume to address that issue in total. Instead, in this article, I share some of my wonderings about more feminist participatory research. How might considering more feminist participatory research help emancipatory participatory research (PR), its practices, and advocates be more congru- ent with participatory research’s transformative intentions? I intend only to highlight issues for our ongoing dialogue about quality human inquiry

FEMINISTM

Any use of the term feminism immediately requires definition. I start with the assumption that there is not one monolithic feminist perspective; rather, there are many feminisms and feminist standpoints (Lather, 1991; Mohanty, 1991a; Stanley & Wise, 1990). Although I recognize &dquo;common differences&dquo; (Joseph & Lewis, 1981; Mohanty, Russo, & Torres, 1991), I also recognize common threads in the tapestry of feminism.

For me, feminism(s) includes the following:

1. Feminism(s) acknowledges that women, despite their diversity, face some form of oppression and exploitation. A commonality is the diversity of women’s struggles in response to these varied oppressions. These struggles and their varied agendas naturally take place in specific historical and cultural contexts in response to specific complex realities (Mohanty, 1991b). Whereas it acknowledges the diverse experiences of oppression, feminism(s) also affirms and celebrates women’s diverse strengths and resistance strategies. Women are not, nor have they been, helpless, hopeless victims.

2. Women experience their oppressions, struggles, and strengths differently, given their multiple identities, which may include race, class, culture, ethnicity, sexual preference, age, physical abilities, and our nation’s place in a changing international order.

3. Feminism(s) includes a commitment to uncover and understand the web of forces that cause and sustain all forms of oppressions.

4. Finally, feminism(s) expects a commitment of women to work individually and collectively m everyday life to challenge and transform the many systems,

structures, and relationships that sustain the varied forms of oppression. Included in this commitment is a willingness, in all women’s diversity, to build alliances without surrendering or minimizing their differences. Hence feminist activism is not limited to a struggle against gender oppression, for gender oppression is not experienced or structured in isolation from other oppressions.

Feminism(s) strives to give voice to the many visions of a more just and loving world. Although feminism(s) pushes women to work actively to create new structures and relationships, the real challenge is to live out new ways of being in relationship in the world. At their core, feminism(s) and participatory research hold in common transformative and liberatory intentions. Yet, participatory research, as I came to know it during the 1980s, often neglected gender issues in oppression. Today, many years later, the challenge to consider and practice more feminist participatory research is still before us.

p.109

PR’s proposed combination of research, education, and action can be overwhelming and exhausting. Why take all this on with one project or one endeavor? Why take it on with so-called research? As much as PR is about community and personal change, it is also about transforming research itself-the purposes, processes, and products. In this endeavor, PR advocates are not alone. Those advocating participatory research are part of the many loose alliances working in a multiplicity of settings, in a multiplicity of ways, on a multiplicity of issues for transformation. Participatory research, then, is one of many ways to challenge oppressive structures, relationships, and practices that stifle participation and voice raising. As a feminist participatory research advocate whose views have grown out of experience, I am not promoting some pure and perfect participatory research for all research needs. I am much more an advocate of participation for transformation, as a power-shifting means and end, whether it be more participatory and emancipatory education, evaluation, organizing, managing, or research. The process of engaging in collective investigation, education, and action is as potentially empowering as is any of the actual &dquo;knowledge&dquo; produced

p.111

THE ANDROCENTRIC FILTER AND INCONGRUENCIES

Feminism has taught me to pay attention to my vague annoyances, particularly in trying to grapple with possible incongruencies in attempting participatory research. For example, if women, in all their diversity, are excluded or marginalized from question-posing, problem-posing community forums of some PR projects, then women’s diverse voices, visions, and strengths will no doubt be excluded. Exactly whose problems and questions will PR address? If women have unequal access to project participation, then women no doubt have unequal access to any project benefits. How can you share in the supposed empowerment from a PR project that continues your silence and marginalization? Was this potentially and avowedly emancipatory research approach intended only for the male &;oppressed&;? Exactly which systems and structures of oppression would PR attempt to dismantle or replicate? Would men engaged in PR ever seek to dismantle patriarchy?

AREAS FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION

First, one of the key features of engaging in any participatory endeavor, research included, is simply time. Given the arguably worldwide sexual division of labor, does participatory research demand something fundamentally different of and from women and men, participants as well as advocates? Meaningful involvement in all phases of a PR endeavor takes time. What does this mean when considering many women’s double day, which includes responsibilities for care of children, the sick, and the elderly? Often these obligations, time and labor intense, are not shared equitably by the men in women’s lives. Does PR require something essentially different of women than it does of men, based on differing realities of daily life constructed in part by gender? It is active involvement in the various processes and phases of PR that is necessary for meaningful input, control, benefits, and potentially empowerment. Even among PR advocates, who is raising our sons and daughters or caring for the sick among us? Who has to arrange or purchase child or elder care to participate in these endeavors?

Second, just as active and meaningful participation in PR takes time, so too do the building and maintenance of meaningful, reciprocal, and caring relationships take time. Authentic human development requires at its core human interaction, the building and nurturing of relationships. A more feminist PR asks us to examine more closely how our actual organizational structures, processes, and practices shape and influence how people, often of unequal power and privilege, are ;in relationship; with each other. Over the course of time, human relationships take time, space, purpose, and reciprocity to grow and flourish. Trust and concern cannot be &;hothoused; or faked. PR assumes radical changes in the relationship between the researcher and those traditionally researched. What other radical relationship changes might a more feminist PR suggest? What is implied for the training of, practice of, and alliance building of participatory researchers? P.114

If more feminist participatory research requires that we choose to be different in the world of relationships and to be more self-reflective in all our relationships, then what does this mean for the training of participatory researchers? As Meulenberg-Buskens (1994) declares,;There is no dance without a dancer&dquo; (p. 44). We cannot merely train PR;technicians; who know the steps but cannot feel the music, its rhythm, and its beauty. P.115

Third, among other things, PR is about the redistribution of power. More feminist participatory research might help us to reconceptualize the very notion of power. Hartsock (1974; also see Harding, 1986, p. 14) argued that instead of conceiving of power as domination over others and resources, feminists have been redefining power as sharing and providing energy and access to resource mobilization to others as well as to self. What would this look like in PR projects? How is the reconceptualizing of and sharing of power taking place within the relationships of PR advocates? What kinds of power dynamics exist in the relationships within which PR advocates are working and living? P.115

Fourth, one goal of PR is to mobilize oppressed people to act in their own interests. A popular people’s organization might then be either a necessary prerequisite or a hoped-for outcome of PR. Park (1993, p. 18) proposed that where there is little shared life or no people’s organizational entity, PR must first create a community base before it can do collective investigation. What conditions are necessary to create such communities and organizations, particularly ones inclusive of the multiplicity of women who are often excluded through many arrangements, overt and covert, from problem-posing, decision-making, and resource-allocating opportunities? What do we need to consider not only to expand women’s meaningful inclusion in historically male organizations but also to transform such organizations in meaningful ways that speak to issues of human relationships, community, and shifting power definitions and realities of both women and men. A more feminist participatory research might help us reframe the organization and community-building components of PR.

Fifth, participatory research often starts with some kind of problem naming or posing. Out of lives in which gender partially shapes different experi- ences, men and women may sometimes name and pose different problems for investigation and action. The instances seem rare in which men name their oppression of the women in their lives as a problem to be investigated and solved. How can PR advocates avoid colluding, even unintentionally or for strategic purposes, with oppressive gender relations? How might a more feminist participatory research interface with the many localized actions of women’s groups challenging specific oppressive practices and beliefs deeply rooted in culture and religion? P.116

Sixth, many consciousness-raising and mobilization efforts by and for women have used information produced by traditional social science. For example, women have been able to use statistical, descriptive data from large-scale studies in areas as diverse as sexual harassment, rape, and wage disparity. How can advocates of PR, which is usually not large scale, use technical or descriptive knowledge produced via traditional social science approaches? Such traditionally produced information has been powerful for mobilization, consciousness raising, and public education. Might a more feminist participatory research build bridges between traditional and alternative paradigm research?

Seventh, Stanley and Wise (1990), when analyzing feminist research, called for a concrete account of the process of the research’s production and the social relations that give rise to it. A more feminist participatory research might account more explicitly for the conditions of its own production. How can we make more visible and open to analysis the ways in which participatory research is being produced?

Eighth, PR proposes an extensive, at times overwhelming, agenda and process. It can be near paralyzing to compare one’s faltering beginnings and exhausting middles to the neatly documented endings of others’ PR efforts. No PR effort lacks critics. Yet it is in the sharing of the flaws and shortcomings that we free ourselves from the paralyzing need to do it perfectly A more feminist participatory research might expand the range of endeavors and outcomes we allow ourselves to celebrate. P.116

When I tried to use a Freirian problem-posing format with former battered women, I began by asking;What problems do you see in your lives and communities?; Their answers began someplace else. Almost to a woman, they began by describing and acknowledging the strengths and successes in their lives. In the sharing of successes, however small and micro, we gain courage and encouragement to learn by doing. Feminism allows us to acknowledge shortcomings while redefining success in an increasingly isolating and alienating world.

CONCLUSION

In closing, as we continue to examine what taking sides means in research, let us consider how feminism(s) might enrich participatory research. Besides pushing us to see differently, the feminist ontological challenge is to consider being differently. Let us reconsider what it is that we are each trying to liberate ourselves from and transform ourselves and our relationships, communities, and structures into. How are we willing to be on a daily basis in our many relationships, research and otherwise?