The Environmental Justice and Sustainability Research Toolbox

Key Topics to Engage in Module:

1. Research ethics
2. Identities, Positionalities, Social location
3. Critical Ethical Reflexivity, Embodiment
4. Power, Privilege
5. Intersectionality, feminist standpoint
6. Sociohistorical analysis, comparative critical social analysis

Guiding Questions:

1. Who are you? What identifies, positionalities, and/or lived experiences have informed your understanding of yourself, others/communities and/or social contexts/social issues?
2. How do these understandings inform, guide and/or surface in relation to your research inquiry -- the questions you ask, the methods you use, the results you discern -- and the research process?
3. What ethics, values and principles must you, as a researcher, uphold to ensure the integrity of the research and the safety/wellbeing of participants/communities?

Module Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Engage in a process of critical ethical reflexivity that involves being self-aware and attuned to dynamics of power, privilege and oppression in relation to communities, contexts and your own identities/positionalities.
• Develop a practice of critical ethical reflexivity that is sustained through constant self-awareness, introspection and social analysis of awareness of context.
• Ethically conduct research with participants/communities because you have completed and fulfilled the requirements associated with IRB, specifically the Human Subjects CITI training certification
  • Complete CITI/Human Subjects ethics training: https://citiprogram.org/index.cfm?pageID=14
• Develop a critically compassionate awareness/understanding of how your identities, lived experiences, feelings/emotions  and/or body may reproduce forms of power that may support and/or challenge the research process and/or participants/community.

I. Overview & Main Concepts: Power, Positionalities & Context

Readings:

• Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2014). R-words: Refusing research. In D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.), Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223-248). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
• *Corlett, S. & Mavin, S. (2018). Reflexivity and researcher positionality. In The sage handbook of qualitative business and management research methods (pp. 377-398). SAGE Publications Ltd, https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526430212
• *Milner IV, H. R. (2007). Race, culture, and researcher positionality: Working through dangers seen, unseen, and unforeseen. Educational researcher, 36(7), 388-400.
• *Cruz, M. R. (2012). Ni con dios ni con el diablo: Tales of Survival, Resistance, and Rebellion from a Reluctant Academic. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1).
• Gallagher, C. A. (2000). White Like Me? Methods, Meaning, and Manipulation in the Field of White Studies. In Warren, J.W., & Twine, F. W. (eds.), Racing research, researching race : Methodological dilemmas in critical race studies (p. 67-92 ). New York, NY: New York University Press.

II. Practice: Embodying Critical Ethical Reflexivity

Readings:

• Cervantes-Soon, C. (2014). The US-Mexico border-crossing Chicana researcher: Theory in the flesh and the politics of identity in critical ethnography. Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies, 6(2), 97-112.
• *Langhout, R. D. (2006). Where am I? Locating myself and its implications for collaborative research. American Journal of Community Psychology, 37(3-4), 267-274.
• Rauk, L. (2021). Getting to the heart of it: A Reflection on the Importance of Community Psychologists Developing an Anti-racist Practice. Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice, 12(3).
• Silva J. M. (2017). When Research "Unravels": One Community Psychologist's Tale of Becoming a Nepantlera. American journal of community psychology, 59(1-2), 239–251.
• *Fernández, J. S. (2018). Toward an ethical reflective practice of a theory in the flesh: Embodied subjectivities in a youth participatory action research mural project. American journal of community psychology, 62(1-2), 221-232.

Some of these videos can complement some of the readings/in-class activities or assignments described in the section below.

Videos:

Activity I.

• Watch the TedTalk, "How Studying Privilege Systems Can Strengthen Compassion" by Peggy McIntosh. And, read the article by Peggy McIntosh (1989) "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" and reflect on your positionalities, identities and proximities to "whiteness" and other structures of power. Engage with the following prompts by reflecting and discussing these with a peer/class, and/or free-writing about these in a journal:
  • Consider the reading and identify those items on the list that stood out to you that were most salient. Why were these most salient for you? Provide a story or an example of 1 privileged identity and how you came to recognize it.
  • McIntosh describes the "invisible knapsack" as a set of unearned privileges. Given her explanation of this, what is in your "invisible knapsack"? How does this shape your life, access to opportunities and resources, forms of power?
  • What does power mean to you? What does whiteness mean to you? How does power and/or whiteness surface in your life?

Activity II.

• Engage in the Step Over the Line / Privilege Walk Activity
  • Follow the instructions and/or modify according to the class and context
  • Engage in a debriefing reflection/discussion following the activity

Activity III.

• Assign students to complete 1-2 Harvard Implicit Bias Tests. Then, encourage students to write a critical reflexivity journal entry about their experiences following analysis and reflection on their results.
• Use the following questions or prompts as a guide for student discussion/writings:
  • What stood out to them, and why?
  • What was new information? Or what confirmed their assumptions?
  • Have students consider what they can do to unpack these biases and assumptions. In other words, how will students engage with those unconscious/conscious biases that may surface in relation to their research/project.