Listening to Difficult Stories: Qualitative Research in Vulnerable Communities

This article uses reflexive auto-ethnography to highlight the negative impact and transformative power of listening and reading stories of the marginalized. This is achieved through sharing experiences from conducting narrative interviews with incarcerated women. The negative emotional impact of listening to stories of trauma, dehumanization and disempowerment is revealed as I share my experiences of listening to incarcerated women’s narratives. At the same time, the transformative power of these stories in challenging dominant narratives held by the listeners is highlighted. Mixed emotions of sadness, pain, trauma and a confrontation with a human paradox of the bad and good inherent in all of us was evoked as I listened to the stories of the women. The single story of dangerous people I held about incarcerated women was challenged as I was confronted by my own prejudices towards them. Listening to their stories provided me with an opportunity to connect with them while I also accessed common humanity that is characterized by unique life journeys, experiences and emotions. The article highlights the significance of self-care and positive transformation of the self in qualitative research with vulnerable communities is highlighted.

Encountering and confronting colonizers: One community psychology practitioner's experience

As community psychology engages with the decolonial turn (Maldonado-Torres, 2017), community practitioners are becoming increasingly aware of and attuned to instances of colonizing practices. In this proposed presentation, one community psychology practitioner will share a case example from the evaluation of one U.S. based foundation’s initiative to build community collaboratives in rural settings that included historically excluded populations. This presenter will briefly share the methodology and foundational theoretical model employed with the overlaid principles for equity and justice that guided the evaluation. She will follow this with a description of how the application of the model while incorporating the equity and justice principles uncovered colonizing practices that were occurring as the grantees built their community collaboratives.
The presenter will provide examples of practices that were identified, and the evaluation team’s experience when they reported them to the foundation leadership and staff. This presentation will highlight the challenges the evaluation team confronted when they brought colonizing practices and colonizers into the open and confronted white privilege. This experience supports Villanueva’s (2018) contention that “despite all their talk of wanting to help, reform, even revolutionize the world, saviors won’t tough the underlying system of privilege and power because that’s what grants them their status and position in the world.” (Kindle location 1267)

Chinese allyship building: From stranger to ally

Promoting social change and supporting positive outcomes for the community through collective practices and empowerment are the core to allyship, which reflects the notion of benevolence. Benevolence refers to the morally valuable characteristic or virtue of taking actions to benefit others. This Western concept of benevolence echoes the Confucian philosophy of Ren. Confucianism posits that Ren is the perfect virtue of human beings and the ontology of moral principles that surpass personal interests. Confucian ethics advocate that scholars are bestowed upon cultural missions and expected to uphold higher moral standards of Ren. Scholars should devote themselves to benefit the world with the way of humanity. Built upon the Chinese philosophical concept of Ren, the Chinese social orientation theory and the Chinese social interaction model, this presentation proposes a Chinese allyship model. The model highlights that allyship is a process through which the scholar becomes an ally from a stranger to the community. This process involves four stages—Shengren (Stranger), Shuren (Acquaintance), Jiaren (family member) and ally. There are three psychological domains—selfish, obligatory and authentic affections—at every stage. In the allyship construction process, the weightings and domination of the three domains change. At the stranger stage of allyship, selfish affection overweights obligatory and authentic affections. At the acquaintance stage, obligatory affection overweights selfish and authentic affection. At the stage of family member, obligatory and authentic affections overweight selfish affection. At the ally stage, authentic affection overweights obligatory and selfish affections. This model provides an innovative, cultural window into research on allyship.

Community Engaged Research and Praxis: It’s all about Building Bridges

Over the last few years, there has been an increased awareness that traditional approaches fell short in addressing safety and health challenges confronting communities globally. A need exists to integrate research with action by optimising community participation. Community engagement is the cornerstone of community engaged research and praxis. Embracing and embedded within a community – based participatory research ethos, this study aims to critically illustrate with a tapestry of narratives and reflections, how a research and a community – based organization partnered by mobilizing the youth and community assets to prevent interpersonal violence, promote generative masculinities and femininities, safety and peace in a disenfranchised context in Cape Town, South Africa. This study also demonstrates the tenacity and resilience of community – based activist researchers and affirms their agency and activism having transcended insurmountable challenges in their quest to advance social justice and transformation and foster sustainable community building.
Naiema Taliep , Samed Bulbulia1 & Marcellino Jonas