3.2.1 Conducting Ethical-Political Research
Identifying urban youth organizing as the background for this work, it is important to recognize that urban issues are worthy of study by urban youth themselves. The practical application of critical literacy praxis within urban activist spaces allow youth to purposefully negotiate contested authority and construct positive identities, possessing the potential to effect social change. Whether dubbed presumptuous or activist to do so, I take on this study in part to see how this research can support further training of youth activists and organizers with the inter-textual tools to engage in the war of ideas against hubris, prejudice and anti-intellectualism.
This is important when thinking about research through a cultural studies epistemology in which to “open up spaces for authentic dialogue, new forms of participation, and curricular projects that are immediately relevant to the lives of urban youth” (Morrell, 2004, p.12).
Ethical-political research respects divergences and does not seek to essentialize participants into easily identifiable categories that treat subjects as objects in need of external diagnosis. “Ethical-political strategy” is a concept that has been applied to much critical social scientific research when foregrounding the subjectivity of research participants in respect for their self-reportage (see Behring, 2013). Leading post-foundational educational researcher Patti Lather defined what is ethical-political as that which does not dictate moral and political propriety, but rather seeks to understand the impetus behind such prescriptive dictates (Lather, 2001).
To conduct ethical-political research, it was important to conceptualize a methodological
own experience. Since critical literacy is understood in relation to its deferral of definition and youth organizing is a space resistant to academic co-optation, this study is well suited for the consideration and application of methods that do no moralistic harm to the subjects of study.
Following Lather (2001), there is a centrality of praxis, of “research as process” through a critical emancipatory model of reflexivity. This involves a level of what Lather called
“undecidability,” a reminder “that moral and political responsibility can only occur in the not knowing, in the not being sure” (Lather 2001, p. 187). Thus the emergent design of this study was greatly influenced by the individual participants. This model of emergent design allowed for research relationships to be developed and sustained through continuous reflexive dialogue on becoming activists, engaging a process built on collaboration.
Thus, as an ethical-political undertaking, this research project was conceived of as an approach to collaborative and participatory research, that provided participants with
opportunities to refine research and interview questions, to determine methods of data
collection, analysis, explication and representation of findings (Cammarota & Fine, 2008). It is an appropriate approach in part because the topics of human rights and social justice take seriously ethical questions. In what follows, I outline my role as researcher in negotiation with the multiple subjects of study before moving to discuss methods for data collection and
analysis.
3.2.2 Polyvocal Subjectivity and Role as Researcher
As primary investigator, I aim to be transparent about my bias and my subjectivity. The reason for this is because I defer to the subjectivity of participants; I see my role as researcher as an exploratory one into communities of learners, looking at civic engagement, youth development
and social justice organizing to add support to anti-oppressive struggles alongside youth. I believe it is valuable that these youth engage in human rights activist and social justice
organizing, and I seek to understand how and why they do so. Thus, this research was designed, in part, to offer a space for the participants to engage in critical reflection, considering their identities as activists and further positioning themselves as agents of social and political power.
This supports calls from across the educational research landscape for social scientific inquiries into youth leadership that is connected to critical civic engagement in out-of-school spaces (see Ginwright & Cammarota, 2007).
Such designs add to understanding about the constitution of subjectivity, looking at the ways in which youth organizers articulate their activist identities as they engage in critical literacy praxis. By working in participatory ways with study participants, I sought to provide a forum for research that simultaneously allowed these youth activists to broadcast their positions and their multiple messages, to counter-narrate, peer-educate and connect with others involved in the same/always different struggles through a polyvocal approach to a politics of difference (Giroux, 2005). Hatch (2002) has characterized such attempts toward polyvocal educational inquiry as an intimation toward post-structuralist research, where research is designed with the contention that truths are multiple, fragmented, and contextual. Undertaking a polyvocal approach involves a series of steps that include: identifying all contributing voices, write a narrative of each selected voice, refine the narrative and revise to best represent each included voice (Hatch, 2002, p. 202).
The design herein proposed is thus an attempt to conduct research that is strategically ethical-political in its reportage of the multiplicity of youth activist voices, understanding the diverse experiences of urban youth organizing through the organizers themselves. While
qualitative research may traditionally tend toward a more holistic analysis, intentionally polyvocal research moves beyond the phenomenological goal of ascertaining “the meaning,”
“the structure,” or “the essence” of the experience of participants (Tobin & Davidson, 1990).
Polyvocal research considers the various meanings, structures, and constructions of experience, and offers alternate modes of representing findings. Thus, the write up of the study reflects the multiple meanings participants make of their experience while simultaneously analyzing their critically literate praxis as activists. Below, I outline the emergent research design and the actualization of that design in negotiation with participants. I first address sources for data collection and end by discussing steps of analysis.