About the Book
Contemporary Vulnerabilities offers critical reflections about vulnerable moments in research committed to social change. This interdisciplinary collection gathers reflexive narratives and analyses about innovative methodologies that engage with unconventional and unexpected research spaces inhabited and shared by scholars. The authors encourage us to collaborate within, reflect on, and confront the frictions of inquiry around social change. With an aim of contesting the dominance of Eurocentric epistemologies, the collection includes modes of storytelling and examples of knowledge gathering that are often excluded from academic texts in general and methodological texts in particular. All those interested in research methodologies and social justice inquiry will find provocation and recognition in this volume, including scholars, ethics boards, and students.
Contributors: Aly Bailey, Kayla Besse, Meredith Bessey, Madeline Burghardt, Claire Carter, Shraddha Chatterjee, Yuriko Cowper-Smith, Eva Cupchik, Cheyanne Desnomie, Bongi Dube, Athanasia Francis, Rebecca Godderis, Moses Gordon, Emily Grafton, Caitlin Janzen, Evadne Kelly, Debra Langan, Rebecca Lennox, Corinne L. Mason, Tara-Leigh McHugh, Preeti Nayak, Anh Ngo, Jess Notwell, Marcia Oliver, Cassandra J. Opikokew Wajuntah, Merrick Pilling, Kendra-Ann Pitt, Salima Punjani, seeley quest, Carla Rice, Jen Rinaldi, Lori Ross, Kate Rossiter, Brenda Rossow-Kimball, Siobhán Saravanamuttu, Melissa Schnarr, Bettina Schneider, Irene Shankar, Skylar Sookpaiboon, Chelsea Temple Jones, Amelia Thorpe, Paul Tshuma, Amber-Lee Varadi, Jijian Voronka, Kristyn White.
Table of Contents:
Preface | Chelsea Temple Jones, Claire Carter, and Caitlin Janzen
Introduction | Claire Carter, Caitlin Janzen, and Chelsea Temple Jones
I. Vulnerable Moments
1. NRI/Outsider/Returnee: The Location of Trust in Ethnographic Practice | Shraddha Chatterjee
2. To Whom Are We Accountable? The Vulnerability of Deep Listening in Feminist Ethnographic Research | Rebecca Lennox
3. Discard or Save the Leftovers? What To Do with Truths That Cannot Be Told | Brenda Rossow-Kimball and Kristyn White
II. Reflections on Challenges and Hard Decisions in Research Processes
4. Un(rendered) stories: Ethical Considerations of Translation Work in Research | Anh Ngo
5. "Crossroad" Moments and the Choice to Respond: Diverging from Textbook Ethics | Yuriko Cowper-Smith and Preeti Nayak
6. The Messiness of Applying Feminist Research Principles: Reflections on Researching Rape Culture on Campus | Rebecca Godderis, Debra Langan, and Marcia Oliver
III. Reflections on Contemporary Approaches to Key Methods and Concepts
7. Disrupting Codified Academic Norms through Decolonization | Emily Grafton, Moses Gordon, Cheyanne Desnomie, Cassandra J. Opikokew Wajuntah, and Bettina Schneider
8. A familiar stranger: Hindsight and Foresight Reflexivity, Multiple Interviews, and a Young Academic Interviewing a Young Mother | Amber-Lee Varadi
9. Queering the Activist/Academic: An Autoethnography of Queering Research with/in Community Spaces | Amelia Thorpe
10. Even With the Best of Intentions: An Accounting of Failures in a Participatory Research Project | Lori Ross, Merrick Pilling, Kendra-Ann Pitt, Jijian Voronka
IV. Reflections on Creative Research Collaborations and Relationships
11. Building Collaboration through (Performative) Conversation: An Indigenist and a Feminist Reflect on Writing and Learning Together | Melissa Schnarr and Eva Cupchik
12. Working Collectively Across our Minoritized Differences: Vulnerabilities and Possibilities of ReVisioning Fitness | K. Alysse Bailey, Meredith Bessey, Carla Rice, Evadne Kelly, Tara-Leigh F. McHugh, Bongi Dube, Paul Tshuma, Skylar Sookpaiboon, Kayla Besse, Salima Punjani, and seeley quest
13. “Sorry, My Child Is Kicking Me under the Desk”: Intersectional Challenges to Research During the COVID-19 Pandemic | Irene Shankar and Corinne L. Mason
14. "It Was the Worst Place I Ever Lived"... ‘It Was the Best Place I Ever Worked": Exploring the Productive Potential of Narrative Discrepancies and Bias in Qualitative Research | Madeline Burghardt
V. Reflections on the Methodologically Unresolved
15. Decolonial Co-Resistance as Indigenous Methodology: Deepening Resistance and Decolonizing the “Co-” | Jess Notwell
16. The Weight of It All: Methodological Implications to Community-Engaged Research on Violent Memory | Jen Rinaldi, Kate Rossiter, and Siobhán Saravanamuttu
17. Vulnerabilities, Affects, and Solidarities: A Rape Survivor’s Tale | Athanasia Francis
Conclusion: Finding (a) Dwelling in Vulnerabilities | Caitlin Janzen, Chelsea Temple Jones, and Claire Carter
Contributors
About the Author :
Claire Carter is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender, Religion, and Critical Studies at the University of Regina. Chelsea Temple Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies at Brock University. Caitlin Janzen is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at York University and works in research administration at the University of Calgary.
Review :
“This book is both inspirational and aspirational, demonstrating how researchers can find hopeful, generative entry points into ethical social justice research. In discussions too often dominated by detached, positivist notions of research, Contemporary Vulnerabilities disrupts categorical notions of vulnerability and instead centres vulnerability as an inherent part of research relationships and processes.” Christina Clark-Kazak, University of Ottawa
"This book is a carefully curated collection of analytic reflections by social justice researchers whose standpoints vary in meaningful ways. Its core project is to shake, rattle, and roll the concept of 'vulnerability' such that we stop assigning it automatically to certain groups without accounting for the ways that people push back—personally and collectively—and for the subjectivity and situatedness of the researcher. By chipping away at 'objectivity' as a form of ruling, contributors suggest fresh directions for rigorous social science in the contemporary moment." Kathryn Church, Associate Professor Emeritus, Disability Studies, Toronto Metropolitan University
